The Famous Mae Hong Son Loop

Two nights in a loop from Chiang Mai, self-guided, 680 kilometres over three riding days round the best known motorcycle road in Thailand.

The Mae Hong Son loop sits in the southern end of the Himalayan chain, which is why it does what it does: 1,864 bends by the official count along a 300-kilometre stretch, and a road that features on most lists of the great rides in Asia.

Pai comes first, a riverside town with a night market, bars and live music that has had a travellers’ population for decades, then Ban Rak Thai near the Myanmar border, a Chinese village founded by Kuomintang soldiers who crossed over after 1949 and whose food and language are still more Yunnanese than Thai. A boat trip reaches a Long Neck Karen village, and the loop closes over Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain in Thailand at just over 2,500 metres, with a sealed road to the top.

The tour is self-guided; the full inclusions are not itemised on the operator’s page and are worth confirming at booking. The riding is a hundred per cent paved at 180 to 300 kilometres a day, and the route is the same one the operator’s guided tours use, which makes this the cheapest way onto it. The cool dry season from November to February is the window, since the burning season in March and April fills the valleys with smoke. Three days is a long weekend, and the loop is the single thing most riders come to northern Thailand for, so doing it unaccompanied with the hotels booked and the route loaded is a sensible first move before signing up to anything longer.