Tianxiang is the place where Taroko Gorge opens out for a moment, and where most people stop. Two rivers meet here at the upper end of the gorge, and on a small terrace above them stand a hotel, a few shops, a bus stop and a temple, with a white pagoda on the hill above, reached by a suspension bridge across the river. After the dim tunnels and narrows below, it feels like coming up for air: the cliffs step back, the sky widens, and you can hear yourself think.
For riders on the Central Cross-Island Highway this is the last real service stop before the long climb into the mountains. Beyond Tianxiang the road leaves the marble gorge behind and begins to wind upward through forest towards the high passes, with few villages and little in the way of shops. The shops at Tianxiang sell drinks, snacks and simple meals, and it is worth topping up on water here, but for fuel you need to think ahead, filling up in Hualien and checking where the next station on your route will be.
The area has a quiet history. Before the road, the Truku people, the indigenous group whose name the gorge carries, lived in villages scattered across the terraces and slopes, and their trails linked the valleys long before the Japanese colonial authorities and later the Nationalist government built roads. Some of the old paths survive as hiking trails, such as the trail to Baiyang waterfall a little further up the road, which runs through a series of tunnels to a waterfall and a curtain of water pouring from the rock.
The 2024 Hualien earthquake hit this area hard, with landslides and damage to roads and buildings, and the reopening of the highway and trails has been a step-by-step process. Check before you go, and ask locally about rockfall. When the road is open, Tianxiang is a beautiful place to spend a night, waking up to the sound of the rivers and setting off into the mountains in the early morning, before the buses arrive. The light in the gorge is softest then, and the road is yours.