Day 08: The Last Ride Back. Chiang Mai Thailand

And just like that, it was our last day on the road.

After a week of mountains, endless bends, rain, sunshine, caves, temples, birthdays, massages, roadside lunches, Pad Thais, Mango Sticky Rice and more kilometres than I care to count, we had just one final ride left. Around 200 kilometres from Mae Sariang back to Chiang Mai.

After last night’s celebrations, we left the hotel at around 9.30 a.m., and naturally, because this was our last riding day, the weather decided to give us a proper farewell.

It poured. 

Not a polite little shower that you could ignore but proper northern Thailand mountain rain. Within minutes, the roads were glistening, the riders were soaked and the rain gear was getting another serious workout. 

Krishni, Khairy and I took one look at the weather and decided that we had already proved our adventurous credentials. We climbed into the SUV with Asela and Nishantha and left the boys to brave the elements on their motorbikes.

From the SUV, I watched our riders disappear into the rain, little flashes of colour moving through the misty mountain roads. And somehow, the scene took me straight back to our last riding day in Bhutan where it rained for eight straight hours of riding.

It made me realise that this is one of the things I love most about these trips. It is never really about perfect weather or perfectly comfortable roads. It is about being out there, sharing the experience with good friends and seeing what the road decides to throw at us. Sometimes it is sunshine and spectacular views. Sometimes it is pouring rain and soaking-wet shoes. Either way, those are also moments we end up remembering.

We stopped for lunch along the Doi Bo Luang Forest Park in Khun Yuam lined with tall, slender pine trees to give it a European-like woodland atmosphere. Here is where the group’s collective engineering skills really came to the fore.

Apart from the riders’ jackets, gloves, and helmets, their shoes were already completely soaked, so the mission was now simply to stop the shoes from filling up any more with water. What followed was a rather entertaining brainstorming session involving plastic bags, covers and just about anything else that might keep water out.

And then AB came up with the brilliant idea of using  condoms as shoe covers. Yes, you read that correctly. New condoms, of course. Apparently, if they are designed to keep something else dry, why not shoes? Unfortunately, even the XXL size was not quite XXL enough for motorcycle boots. Watching the boys trying to stretch them over their already wet shoes was comedy gold. And no, that did not work. 

By this point, fashion had completely left the building. I was beginning to wonder what the people in the restaurant thought of us!

As we got closer to Chiang Mai, the mountains gradually gave way to more familiar highways. and and the feeling changed. We were heading back to where it had all started. Eight days earlier, we had arrived in Chiang Mai with our bikes waiting and a whole adventure ahead of us. Now we were returning with wet gear, tired bodies, hundreds of photographs and a ridiculous number of stories.

The final odometer reading was 1,258 kilometres.

One thousand two hundred and fifty-eight kilometres through northern Thailand. From Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai, through the Golden Triangle, up to Pai, across the legendary Mae Hong Son Loop, down to Mae Sariang and finally back to Chiang Mai. There had been smooth highways, twisting mountain roads, rain, sunshine, spectacular scenery and enough bends to make counting them completely pointless.

And, of course, there had been the great evenings and after parties.

We checked back into Hotel Ninety Nine. It was also time to say goodbye to Nishantha, who had an early flight to catch, and to our ride captain, AB. After spending many days behind him on the Himalayan, I had become rather used to seeing the back of his helmet. Saying goodbye felt strangely final.

Later that afternoon, we headed out for some well-earned foot and body massages. By now, massages had become almost as essential to the itinerary as the riding itself. After all those kilometres, winding roads and aching muscles, nobody needed much convincing.

Khairy, however, had another important item on her agenda. She was determined to satisfy her obsession with durian and had found the perfect place, complete with a menu that seemed designed especially for her. Everyone has their priorities. Some people hunt for souvenirs, some want the perfect photographs, and Khairy? She wanted durian. And she was not going home without it.

That evening, we had one more celebration. Across the road at De Lanna Hotel, Shehan treated us to another birthday treat. There was food, there were drinks, there was plenty of laughter and, inevitably, more fun. After eight days together, nobody really needed an excuse anymore. We had become a travelling little community, and one more night together felt like the perfect way to finish.

The next morning, at check-out, the mood was noticeably different. The bags were packed, the bikes were gone and there was nowhere else on the itinerary to ride to. This was the bit I always find difficult about travelling with a great group. You spend days together, sharing roads, meals, jokes, frustrations, misunderstandings and little adventures, and then suddenly everyone is standing around saying goodbye.

We said our goodbyes to Vishnu, and this was probably one of the harder goodbyes of the trip. From the very beginning, he had been the cheerful, helpful and incredibly amiable person quietly keeping everything together. Nothing ever seemed too much trouble for him. Whether it was a question about the route, a problem with a bike, a change of plan, finding something we needed or simply making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be, Vishnu was always there with a smile and a very calm “no problem.” Somewhere along the way, Vishnu had stopped being just our guide and organiser and had become one of the gang.

And then he surprised us with something rather special, (apart from his dance moves from last night, of course!): a certificate of completion of the Mae Hong Son Loop for each of us.

Looking back, the certificate was more than just proof that we had completed a route. It represented everything that had gone into those 1,258 kilometres across Northern Thailand: the rain, the legendary 4,088 bends, the early starts, the wrong turns, the roadside stops, the laughter, the birthday celebrations, the aches and pains, the massages and those wonderfully long days when the road simply kept going.

There were beautiful mountain views, little discoveries we hadn’t planned for, plenty of laughter and, of course, the inevitable debates about whose motorcycle was better. We had pushed ourselves, got a little lost, eaten our way through Thailand and collected enough memories to keep us talking for a very long time.

Most of all, it represented the experience we had shared. And if someone asked whether I’d do it all over again? Well, I’d probably say yes. Just give me a little time to recover first!

A huge thank you once again to Ajith for putting this adventure together, especially after the massive disappointment of having to abandon our original Kyrgyzstan plan. When the visa situation put an end to that trip, it would have been very easy to simply call it off and go home disappointed. Instead, Ajith went back to the drawing board, found us another adventure and got us onto motorbikees in northern Thailand. And it won’t be long before we keep asking; Ajith where to next?

As for me, I came away with exactly what I always hope for from a trip like this: new roads, new places, new stories, another coffee table collectible and a group of people who made the journey as memorable as the destination.

The bikes may have stopped at 1,258 kilometres. But the stories are definitely not stopping there.