The Lanna Highlands Loop

Five nights in a loop from Chiang Mai, guided, 830 kilometres over four riding days through the Lanna highlands.

The Lanna kingdom ran this part of Thailand for six hundred years before it was absorbed, and the hills it sat in are the southern end of the Himalayan chain, which is why the roads here do what they do. The Greater Mae Hong Son Loop is the headline: 1,864 curves by the official count, and one of the best known riding roads in Asia.

Pai comes first on the loop, a riverside town with a night market and a long-standing travellers’ population, then Ban Rak Thai, a Chinese village founded by Kuomintang soldiers who crossed the border after 1949 and stayed. Remote roads along the Myanmar border carry the route to Mae Sariang, with a visit to a Long Neck Karen village, then Doi Inthanon, the highest point in Thailand at just over 2,500 metres, with a road to the top.

The tour is guided throughout, with boutique accommodation at each stop; the full inclusions are not itemised on the operator’s page and are worth confirming at booking. The riding is entirely on sealed road at 180 to 250 kilometres a day, which makes this the most accessible tour in the range: no off-road experience is needed. The cool dry season from November to February is the window, since the wet brings landslips and the burning season in March and April fills the valleys with smoke. Four nights is a long weekend with the best known road in Asia in the middle of it, and the four riding days leave an evening in Chiang Mai at either end.