PILLION TOUR

The first proper mountain road most riders meet starts twenty minutes from the old city and doesn't stop for 147 km. We ride the Samoeng Loop anticlockwise — climbing early, saving the best corners for the afternoon. On the way: a 700-year-old tunnel temple, a cave you walk into by lamp, forest that closes over the road, and a waterfall the tour buses drive straight past.

1,864 curves on Route 108 alone — the number every rider quotes, and they come from the other side of the world to ride it. Then there are the 762 on the Pai road. Four days and 713 km the way we run it — over the summit of Doi Inthanon at 2,565 m, past Wachirathan Waterfall on the climb, up to Ban Rak Thai, a Yunnanese village pressed against the Myanmar border, through the gold Shan temples of Mae Hong Son, and home the long way through Pai.

Ask a Thai rider where the best roads are and they will say Nan. Six days and 942 km to find out why — north to the white, black and blue temples of Chiang Rai, along the Mekong to the Golden Triangle where three countries meet, then up the switchbacks to Phu Chi Fa, where you climb before dawn and watch the sun come up over a sea of cloud. After that, south into Nan itself: the ancient salt ponds at Bo Kluea, and mountain roads that stay empty for hours at a time.