CONQUERING ELEPHANT MOUNTAIN
I was planning on photoshooting the Taipei 101 from elephant mountain for my birthday shoot, however, rainy and hazy weather for several days prevented me from doing so. I had no choice but to delay it till the very first day that the weather is just right for it. I read a lot of blogs and saw a lot of pictures of Taipei 101 from the Elephant Mountain from other photographers and it had always been a part of my bucket list to do the same thing. Finally, 2 birds with 1 stone, a wonderful way to post celebrate my birthday and ticked off an item from my bucket list. First thing is how did I get there, well, I took the bus 22 across the Taipei Main Train Station and got off at the Wuxing Elementary School, asked around and walked into some alley and found the staircase going up the Elephant Mountain. The next part would be tackling the grueling and hard climb up the 500 or more steps of stairs. Now, from what i read of other blogs, the climb should only take 15 minutes to do, however, they omitted to mention that the 15 minutes benchmark is for the fit and since in no way can I be considered a fit person, so shamefully, it took me more than an hour to get to the top, with stop at every 20 or so steps, huffing and puffing, and thanking God that I got the presence of mind to take along a 2 liter bottle of water. Eventually, with much grit, sweat and determination, I made it and simply looking and shooting at the sun setting down with the Taipei 101 at Elephant Mountain just blew me away. This is my first but not the last climb up the Elephant Mountain.
