Driving in Northern Thailand: Mountains and Distances

Northern Thailand has the best roads in the country and the least forgiving ones. Above Lampang the land folds into ridge after ridge, the highways stop being straight, and a distance that looks like an hour on the map turns into three. The surfaces are generally good, the traffic is light, and the scenery is genuinely spectacular — which is exactly why so many visitors underestimate it and set off on an underpowered scooter with a phone at twenty per cent.

The two things that make the north different are gradient and time. Everything else — the driving culture, the road signs, the fuel — is much the same as anywhere else in Thailand. But a 125cc automatic scooter that copes perfectly well in Phuket will crawl up Route 1095 with a passenger on the back, and its brakes will fade coming down the other side.

• TerrainContinuous ridges; Doi Inthanon reaches 2,565 m
• Realistic average speedRoughly half what the map suggests on mountain routes
• Worst seasonBurning season, roughly February to April
• ColdestDecember and January mornings, single figures at altitude

The roads you will actually use

Highway 11 and Highway 1 are the fast north–south arteries: dual carriageway, straightforward, the way you arrive from Bangkok. Highway 118 is the direct Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai link, mostly four lanes with two proper mountain sections — see the drive on Highway 118.

Everything interesting is a four-digit route. Route 1095 climbs to Pai and on to Mae Hong Son. Route 108 comes back the southern way through Mae Sariang. Route 1096 and Route 1269 make up the Samoeng loop, the gentlest introduction to northern roads. Route 1148 along the ridge between Chiang Kham and Tha Wang Pha is, by common consent, the finest drive in Thailand. Route 1149 up Doi Pha Tang and the roads around Mae Salong are steeper again.

Four-digit numbers in Thailand generally mean a rural route maintained to a lower standard than a one- or two-digit highway, and in the north that usually means two narrow lanes, no shoulder, and a drop on one side. Our guide to Thai highway numbering explains what the number is telling you.

Gradient, and what it does to a small engine

Northern climbs are not long by Alpine standards but they are steep and they repeat. The classic failure mode on a rented 110cc or 125cc automatic is simple: the bike will get up the hill, slowly, with the engine screaming, and it will get progressively hotter doing so. Two-up with luggage, it may not get up at all, and you will be walking it round a hairpin while a pickup comes down behind you.

Going down is the more dangerous half. A twist-and-go scooter has almost no engine braking, so riders use the brakes continuously, the drums fade, and the bike arrives at the next hairpin faster than the rider expected. The technique — brake before the bend, not in it, and use the gears if you have them — is covered in mountain roads and hairpin bends.

Cars have the same problem in gentler form. An automatic hire car will hold a low gear if you tell it to, either with the paddles or by moving the selector out of D. Do that on the long descents rather than riding the brake pedal, and keep an eye on the temperature gauge on the climbs — see engine overheating in Thailand.

Time, not distance

The single most useful adjustment a visitor can make is to stop thinking in kilometres. On Route 1095 to Pai, 130 kilometres takes three to four hours in a car and longer on a bike with stops. The Mae Hong Son loop is about 600 kilometres and nobody sensible does it in fewer than four days.

Budget on roughly 40 km/h average on any four-digit mountain route, less if you want to stop for photographs, which you will. Our driving time calculator applies that sort of correction; a navigation app generally does not.

The seasons

Cool season, November to February, is the best time to drive here. Dry roads, clear air, spectacular light. It is also genuinely cold at dawn: single figures in Celsius in Chiang Rai and Mae Hong Son, colder on the high roads, and riders regularly underestimate what an hour on a bike at 8°C in a T-shirt does to concentration.

Burning season, roughly February to April, is the north's real problem. Agricultural and forest burning fills the valleys with smoke, air quality collapses, and the views — the entire reason for driving these roads — disappear. Visibility on ridge routes can drop badly, and anyone with a respiratory condition should think hard about a motorbike in March.

Rainy season, roughly June to October, brings landslips, rockfall and washed-out edges on the minor routes, along with genuinely wet hairpins. The main highways stay open; the four-digit routes sometimes do not. The rainy season and flooded roads covers what to expect.

Fuel and remoteness

Along Highways 1, 11 and 118 you are never far from a large forecourt. Off them, the picture changes fast. Route 1148 is famous for having essentially no fuel along its 90-odd kilometres. Stretches of Route 108 south of Mae Sariang, the roads around Doi Phu Kha in Nan, and much of the Mae Hong Son side are served only by village pumps and the roadside bottle sellers — a rack of one-litre glass bottles of petrol outside a shop, sold by the bottle and poured through a funnel. They will get a scooter to the next town. They will not fill a car.

Hazards particular to the north

Loose gravel washed onto bends after rain. Fallen leaves and bamboo, which are slippery. Slow-moving agricultural vehicles with no lights on unlit roads at dusk. Dogs that sleep on the warm tarmac in the villages. Tour minibuses driven fast by people who know the road and assume you do too. And the local speciality: a pickup coming the other way, cutting the apex of a blind hairpin because there is usually nobody there.

None of this makes the north dangerous in the way Bangkok is dangerous. It makes it a place where a small mistake has a bigger consequence, because the next hospital may be an hour away. Read medical evacuation from Thailand and make sure your cover is real before you ride here.

Frequently asked questions