Picked up the bikes from the rental shop in Chiang Mai at 8.40am. With gear stowed and locked, Ahmad Razlan Alias, wife Karlin Kayzee Khairudin, Capt MK Ganesan and I fired up our engines and headed out of Dodge at 10am.
Traffic was relatively light, and within 30 minutes, we were on full blowers on the straights, headed for Doi Inthanon, 108km away.
The plan to tick Thailand’s 1,000 Corners – the Mae Hong Son Loop – off our bucket list was hatched months ago over teh ais (iced tea), croissants, and God-knows-what-else. But scheduling it a week after our week-long ride to Langkawi? Yeah … we weren’t thinking straight.
The weather was great initially, and the road up to the Doi Inthanon National Park provided us with ample opportunity to get some G warm-ups in. The grin factor was off the scales, thanks to a never-ending stretch of sweeping corners and sharp turns. Power delivery on the Honda ADV 350 was smooth, despite a little lag in engine spool-up, so you had to err on the side of caution when overtaking. The rear wheels were a bit skittish and wallowy, especially if you exceeded the bank angles. I quickly realised that I wasn’t that ‘gifted’ to get out of tight spots, so I made a mental note to steer clear of them.
About 20 minutes in, the weather sat on us like something awful. Intermittent rain alternated with light drizzles, and torrential downpour. You had a choice of only these three. Progress was understandably slow, due to the wet road surfaces. Smooth tarmac alternated with gravel and dirt road, slowing us down even more. I was glad that I had changed my mind at the last second, and ditched my original pick – the Yamaha MT03 – for the ADV.
After lunch of steamed fish, Thai salad and pucuk paku (fiddlehead fern), we headed for the Doi Inthanon Reporting Post. At 2,565m above sea level, it is the highest point in Thailand. The ascent was particularly tough, with non-stop rain, bone-chilling winds, and viz of less than 10m. I could barely see my gauges, much less the red strobes in front of me. My glasses and the visor on my modular helmet kept fogging up. I had to crank it open a bit to see where I was going but the cold drops of rain lashing my mouth and cheeks became unbearable. By the time we reached the peak around 2.15pm, I couldn’t feel my face.
The temperature at the peak was a ‘balmy’ 13 degrees Celsius, with winds whipping at 15-20 knots. I found a quiet, relatively unwet corner, huddled, and consoled my weary self.
As I sat down, a klaxon wailed on my phone. That same instant, an alert came in through the SMS. A 4.5 mag quake had hit Chiang Mai. My immediate concern was on the descent. I could only hope that we hadn’t been cut off by a landslide or something worse. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck on a mountaintop, cold, wet, and hungry.
We hadn’t felt any tremors, and within a few minutes, the fear of being marooned on a hilltop outpost had scudded by like a nameless cloud amid a flurry of shots for posterity.
By 3pm, we were on the bikes again. The plan was to find accommodation in Doi Inthanon and then head for Mae Sairang the next day, on our way to Mae Hong Son. Progress was painfully slow. The weather had closed in on us and we were in a proverbial pea-souper. Cap was lead, and he had his amber strobes on to aid the rest of us in trail. Lan and Karlin were in the middle, while I brought up the rear.
By the time we hit clearer weather and stopped for fuel, we had decided to ditch the original plan and push straight for Mae Sairang instead. The time was 4pm. We figured we could make the run in three hours. We flew fangs out, balls to the wall, racing against the clock, against a quickly dying sun.
Weather forced us to stop to put on our wet gear, and as the light faded, we knew that the odds of us making it on time to Mae Sairang were as good as a snowball’s chance in hell. The darkness, combined with the wet conditions, had slowed us down considerably, we could only manage an average speed of between 50 and 70kph. Road surfacing works in the middle of the night forced us to cool our heels for another 10 minutes, pushing us even further behind. Between that and the poor visibility, we were on edge. Unconsciously, the separation between bikes began to close as we struggled to maintain visual ID on one another through the muck, and at night.
Through the rivulets on my visor, I thought I saw Cap’s red tail light suddenly bounce, then shake and shimmy a little. Seconds later, Lan and Karlin’s bike did the same ‘dance’. Before I could figure it out, my Showa front forks dipped and juddered with a bone-jarring ‘bang’ after hitting a huge pothole that seconds ago had almost taken out Lan, Karlin and Cap.
I fought to regain control, but careful not to overdo it. The wet road surface, the incessant rain, the poor visibility, an uncooperative visor – all conspired to send me into a heap of jumbled mess by the side of the road.
Somehow, we all made it and limped into Mae Sairang a few minutes past 8pm. I went to bed that night, cold, sore, and absolutely certain I would never put myself through that again. Ten hours on the saddle, countless near-misses, enduring the biting cold and wind chill just to cover 267km… Yeah… not doing that again anytime soon.
The next morning, at 11am, we were at it again…
