Unseen Lanna Kingdom (Self-Guided)

Four nights in a loop from Chiang Mai, self-guided, 1,270 kilometres across the lesser-used roads of the old Lanna kingdom.

The Samoeng loop serves as a warm-up on the first morning, which is the short circuit Chiang Mai riders use to shake a bike down, then the route heads north to Thaton on the Myanmar border.

Doi Mae Salong follows, a hill town among tea plantations settled by Chinese nationalist soldiers and still more Yunnanese than Thai, then the royal palace and gardens at Doi Tung and the Golden Triangle on the Mekong, where three countries meet and the opium trade was run from until the mid-1990s. Phu Chi Fa comes next, a remote ridge on the Laos border, then Nan, a province that stayed effectively autonomous for centuries and still feels separate, and Bo Kluea, a village in the mountains where salt has been drawn from inland wells for a thousand years. The return crosses another range and passes the lakeside town of Phayao.

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 200 to 320 kilometres a day, so some of the days are long. The cool dry season from November to February is the window. Five days is the length at which northern Thailand stops being the Mae Hong Son loop and starts being a region, and this route deliberately avoids the famous road in favour of Nan, Phu Chi Fa and the salt wells, which is a better proposition for anyone who has ridden the loop already.