The 1,078 islands of Qiandao Lake are the drowned hilltops of the Xin'an River valley, and visiting them by boat gives the clearest sense of the reservoir's extraordinary landscape. The organised tour boats that run from the main Chunan terminal visit a circuit of the more accessible islands — Monkey Island, Snake Island, Bird Island, Gui Peak Island — in a half-day or full-day loop, with stops for walking and photography on each.
The better alternative for independent visitors is renting a small motorboat for three or four hours and navigating by the lake map to quieter islands that the tour boats don't visit. The lake's outer reaches have islands with no facilities, no fences, and no name boards — just forested hills rising from clear water with fish visible in the shallows. Swimming from the boat on a quiet island is the lake at its best: water cold and clear enough to see five metres down, forested slopes above, and a complete absence of the crowds that the Hangzhou day-trip circuit can bring on weekends.