Hong Kong’s towers can make the territory appear almost entirely urban. Yet beyond Sha Tin, a steep path disappears into shaded forest, climbs towards Lion Rock and eventually opens onto an extraordinary view across Kowloon. Reaching it, we discovered, involved rather more steps than the map had thought worth mentioning.
Journey context
Day 63 · Sha Tin to Kowloon · Hong Kong · 13 April 2026
Part of our 2026 journey through East Asia
An uncertain beginning
The Hung Mui Kuk barbecue area is not one of Hong Kong’s more celebrated landmarks. Our taxi driver in Tai Wai had never heard of it, which was not an encouraging start to a walk we already understood would take us up into the hills.
Google Maps was produced. The driver studied it with the expression of a man being asked to deliver two foreigners to a place they had possibly invented. Eventually, however, the road carried us beyond the more familiar parts of Sha Tin and deposited us at the beginning of the trail.
From there, the route climbed towards Sha Tin Pass and the slopes below Lion Rock before descending into Kowloon. On the map, this appeared perfectly reasonable. On the ground, it consisted chiefly of steps.
Into the forest
The steps began almost immediately and continued for more than an hour. There may have been occasional stretches of level ground, but if so they were too brief to establish themselves in the memory.
It was hot, although the forest gave us shade and spared us the full force of the sun. The city gradually receded behind the trees. Traffic noise faded; concrete disappeared; the path became a succession of stone steps rising through dense vegetation.
Other walkers passed in both directions. Their presence was reassuring, although those coming downhill seemed suspiciously composed. We were already learning that people encountered near the end of their walk are not reliable witnesses to the difficulty of its beginning.
The climb was demanding rather than dramatic. There was no single heroic obstacle—only the next step, followed by another, and then an apparently well-funded programme of further steps extending into the forest.
Before the tunnel
We were not the first people to discover that crossing these hills required a certain commitment from the legs.
Long before the Lion Rock Tunnel and the roads that now carry traffic beneath the ridge, paths through these hills connected the villages of Sha Tin and Tai Po with Kowloon.
The Qianlong Ancient Trail, which reaches Hung Mui Kuk, was once an important route for villagers travelling south to buy goods in Kowloon. Porters are also said to have carried locally harvested agarwood across the hills. On the neighbouring Tsz Sha Ancient Trail, farmers took firewood, medicinal herbs and produce over Sha Tin Pass to sell in Wong Tai Sin and Kowloon City.
Sha Tin was not then the high-rise new town we had left that morning. It was a rural district of farms and villages, connected to Kowloon by waterways and mountain paths. During the nineteenth century, nearby Wong Uk Village became a trading station for people and goods moving along the wider route between Guangdong and Kowloon.
Knowing this changed the character of the steps. What had seemed to us an energetically designed recreational inconvenience had once formed part of the practical geography of everyday life.
As we climbed, the old route ceased to be merely an interesting line on a map. We felt it in the heat gathering beneath our clothes, in the need to pause and in the way each new flight of steps reduced the world to the few yards immediately ahead.
Others had crossed these hills for centuries with heavier purposes and heavier loads: baskets of vegetables for market, bundles of firewood, medicinal plants or goods bought in Kowloon. They too would have sweated here, sought out shade, stopped to recover their breath and wondered how much ground remained before nightfall.
We carried bottled water and knew that trains, minibuses and a hotel swimming pool waited at the end. Earlier travellers had no such supporting machinery. Yet walking placed us, briefly and imperfectly, inside the same human rhythm: climb, pause, look back, shoulder the load and continue.
The modern city has not removed the ancient barrier of the hills; it has drilled through it. Since the Lion Rock Tunnel opened in 1967, traffic has passed beneath the ridge in minutes. Above it, the old crossing remains slow enough for the body to understand the distance—and to recognise something of those who travelled it before.
Kowloon revealed
We stopped at the Reunification Pavilion, set on the hillside below the summit of Lion Rock. We had not climbed the peak itself, but by then sitting down felt less like a pause than the successful conclusion of negotiations between mind and legs.
Beyond the pavilion, Kowloon spread across the haze. Towers pressed against towers, roads threaded between them and the city appeared to occupy every available piece of ground.
The surprise was not simply the scale of the view. It was the speed with which Hong Kong had changed character. A short time earlier, we had been surrounded by the streets and high-rise buildings of Sha Tin. Then the forest swallowed us almost completely. Now the dense city had reappeared below, close enough to examine but far enough away to seem momentarily quiet.
For earlier travellers, this view must have carried a different meaning. Kowloon was not the extraordinary wall of towers we saw, but the sight of the settlements, markets and harbour towards which they had been walking. For someone descending with produce to sell, it may have promised business; for someone returning north with purchases, the ridge behind us still represented the long road home.
Lion Rock rose above and behind us. It was possible to continue towards the summit, but we had climbed far enough. Lunch and the view seemed a better use of what remained of our energy.
Lunch with the monkeys
The pavilion also attracted macaques. We had brought food and therefore watched them with a degree of interest that was not entirely zoological.
They watched us in return.
No confrontation followed. The monkeys kept their distance, we retained our lunch, and relations between species remained cordial. It was nevertheless a reminder that Hong Kong’s country parks are not ornamental strips of greenery arranged around the city. They are habitats, and the animals living in them have had plenty of opportunity to study the habits—and food packaging—of visiting humans.
The long way down
From the pavilion, we began the descent towards Wang Tau Hom. Going down had seemed the sensible part of the plan. Our legs, having adjusted themselves to climbing, disagreed.
The steps continued, now placing a different strain on tired knees and thighs. We slowed down and descended carefully. The view disappeared behind us; the forest closed around the path again; and the city returned gradually rather than all at once.
Eventually, we reached the bottom and caught a minibus to Festival Walk. From there, the train carried us back to Sha Tin with the smooth efficiency we had come to expect from Hong Kong’s public transport—and with considerably less effort than the preceding part of the journey.
The day ended in the hotel pool. After hours of heat, steps and careful descent, the cool water supplied an argument for organised civilisation that even Lion Rock Country Park could not entirely answer.
A country park inside the city
Lion Rock Country Park lies along the ridge separating Kowloon from Sha Tin and the New Territories. The Reunification Pavilion stands on the mid-slope rather than at the 495-metre summit, but its position provides a wide view across Kowloon.
This geography reveals something easily missed by visitors who remain close to the harbour and the central districts. Hong Kong is not simply a city with a little countryside attached around its edges. Urban districts, wooded hills, reservoirs, beaches and country parks repeatedly interrupt one another.
Few places make that relationship clearer than the slopes of Lion Rock. From below, the ridge forms a rugged boundary behind Kowloon. From the hillside, the city appears compressed against it—a vast concentration of human life ending abruptly where the forest begins.
Lion Rock also carries meanings that extend beyond the landscape. Its distinctive outline has become a widely recognised emblem of Hong Kong, associated with endurance, collective identity and the determination of those living beneath it.
Even without climbing the summit, walking towards it offers a different understanding of the territory: not only the celebrated vertical city, but the steep green ground against which that city has been built—and the older routes by which generations of people crossed it.
Walking here now
This was a strenuous walk involving a sustained ascent and a long stepped descent. It should not be treated as a casual extension to a morning’s sightseeing.
Anyone considering a similar route should:
- Reconstruct the route carefully before setting out; several paths cross the Lion Rock and Sha Tin Pass area.
- Distinguish between reaching the Reunification Pavilion and continuing to the summit of Lion Rock.
- Carry sufficient water, particularly in warm or humid weather.
- Wear footwear suitable for prolonged climbing and descending on steps.
- Allow more time than the distance alone might suggest.
- Avoid feeding macaques or displaying food where they can reach it.
- Check the weather and official country-park information before departure.
The route gave us one of the most revealing views of Hong Kong—not simply because we could see so much of the city, but because walking allowed us to feel the landscape beneath it.
The heat, the pauses and the slow accumulation of height connected our recreational walk with journeys made through these hills from necessity. We had crossed only a small part of their world, and under incomparably easier conditions, but for a few hours we moved according to the same enduring logic of the terrain.
Continue exploring
Hong Kong
Plan a visit to Hong Kong — Understand the territory, its districts and the experiences worth making time for.
Green Hong Kong
Hong Kong’s parks and green spaces — Explore the wooded, mountainous territory beyond the familiar harbour and city streets.
Planning
Hong Kong itineraries — Build the city’s neighbourhoods, viewpoints and quieter landscapes into a one-, two- or three-day visit.
This walk took place on 13 April 2026. The original daily account was subsequently revised and expanded with historical context and current walking information.