Chiang Mai to Mt. Everest Base Camp Motorcycle Expedition

Twenty-four nights from Chiang Mai to Lhasa, guided, 5,850 kilometres over twenty-one riding days, finishing at the foot of Everest.

Mae Hong Son, Pai and Thaton open the route in northern Thailand before the crossing into Laos and then China at Chiang Khong and Boten. Jinghong in tropical southern Yunnan comes next, which is still south-east Asia in everything but name.

The old Tea Horse Road follows, the caravan route that carried Yunnan tea into Tibet for centuries, by way of Zhenyuan and Dali, then Erhai Lake and Lijiang through the old towns at Shaxi and Jianchuan. Shangri-La comes next with the Ganden Sumtseling monastery and Tiger Leaping Gorge, where the Yangtze runs through a cleft between two peaks. Tibet begins at Quzika, with the salt fields at Yanjing, then the G318 Sichuan-Tibet Highway, which is the best known road in China and includes the seventy-two turns dropping into a single valley, before the high plateau, Everest Base Camp and Lhasa.

The tour is guided; the full inclusions are not itemised on the operator’s page and are worth confirming at booking, and official permits are needed for the China and Tibet sections, which the operator arranges. Twenty-five days at this price is the second most expensive thing in the range, and the altitude is the part to prepare for: the Tibetan plateau sits above 4,000 metres for days at a stretch and acclimatisation is not optional. The riding season is set by the passes rather than by the Thai monsoon, so the dates are fixed and limited. Reaching Everest from Chiang Mai on a motorcycle is a serious undertaking and the route makes no pretence otherwise.