Another great ride out with my good friend Ally.
Making sure I was properly prepared for the cooler weather we have now, I eagerly awaited Allys arrival at my home in Mae salab, keen to get a much needed break from the day to day running of The Stratton ABC Foundation.

Just after 9am she duly arrived and we set off on our journey, riding up to Banthi and left towards San Kam Peang.

Turning right at the main road from Chiang Mai to San Kam Paeng Hot Springs we headed up into the mountains around Doi Saket.

Our original destination was actually was Chae Hom Dam, via the winding mountain roads that, whilst looking like short cuts on the map, are a much longer ride than the highways due to the extreme inclines, hairpins, and potholes along the way. But all this taken in to account , treat the route with due respect and you will enjoy some spectacular views, peace, fantastic mountain air, and friendly greetings along the way.

Not far into our journey we started to see trays of coffee beans laid out at the roadsides, drying in the sun.

A little further we rode through a delightful village and came across further stages in the coffee production process…..follow this link for more.

After enjoying the delicious coffee as well as tasting some of the freshly roasted beans,we pressed on.

There is something about the lush green mountain forests and those twisting roads with their overhang tree ‘tunnels’, brightly coloured flowers and sounds of the wide variety of bird and animal life that means that I can never get enough of it.

Around midday we joined the road that Boon and myself had ridden before , on our way back from Phayao. That ride had been in the early evening and we were not at all prepared, for what was a freezing cold trip in the dark,
in extremely treacherous conditions.

Ever since that crazy ride I had been itching to take that trip in the day time.

The road appeared to be in mildly better condition than the previous time but there were still stretches of potholes that would appear suddenly; stretches where the forest was doing its place to reclaim the road, making it very narrow at times; and most concerning, places where the mountain was reclaiming the road.

This means that even in the daytime you retain an almost constant sense of nervous anticipation; a branch cracks and falls somewhere along the roadside and you quickly look for signs of slipping mountainside; then you look through the gaps in the forestation and gasp as the stunning beauty of it takes your breath away and whatever trepidation you may have about the state of the road fades to insignificance.

We soon realised that our extended stop at the ‘coffee village’ had delayed us enough to mean that reaching Chae Hom Dam and getting back in daylight just wasn’t going to happen.

So instead of carrying on to Chae Son and  Muang Pan we took a right through the National Park. At the check point Ally explained that we were simply passing through on route to Chiang Mai and not actually visiting the waterfall there, and so we avoided having to pay.

We did stop for lunch at the National Park restaurant which sits beside a delightful mountain stream and we spotted many varieties of rarely seen birds as we ate.

From there it was more winding roads, more great views and many picturesque fords on the way to Huai Kaeo and the main road back to Chiang Mai.

Before reaching Huai Kaeo we stopped to see Mae Kapong waterfall, which is just a few metres from the roadside and then stopped at a wonderful new coffee shop in the village that has a great balcony overlooking the main village in the valley below.

For more photos please visit our photobucket album here.

For a more precise instruction on the directions we took and more photos please visit Ally site here.

Well worth the trip yet again:) I got back to Mae Salab a little after 6pm as the sun went down.