The Mountains of the Golden Triangle (Thailand)

Six nights in a compact loop from Chiang Mai on a Royal Enfield, the shortest trip the operator sells and a sensible first taste of riding in Asia.

Chiang Mai opens it among several hundred temples, Wat Chedi Luang included, with the night market in the evening. Chiang Dao follows along the Ping river vegetable patches and across the Mae Taeng valley, with old temples and a cave at the end of it.

Tha Ton comes next below karst cliffs on a teak forest road, climbing Doi Angkhang to around 2,000 metres, with lunch at Ban Luang and long-tail boats on the Kok river. The Golden Triangle follows through Doi Mae Salong, a mountain village settled by Chinese Nationalist soldiers after 1949, and the Mae Fah Luang botanical garden, which sits on former opium poppy fields now growing coffee and tea. That substitution was a royal project and it worked, which is why this corner of Thailand looks the way it does rather than the way it did in the 1970s. Border tracks and the Mekong at Chiang Saen follow.

Chiang Rai is next among rice paddies and fruit crops, with the White Temple, the Baan Dam museum and Wat Huay Pla Kung all optional. The return to Chiang Mai breaks at Phayao lake and the Mae Kuang riverside, and finishes at a massage school opposite the women’s prison, a social enterprise staffed by inmates trained there. Bike rental is included and the price is quoted per person. Six nights, mild distances and good tarmac make this the easiest trip in the range.