Riding high in Ha Giang
hours rising along cliffs flanked by deep mountain gorges, I stop at a cluster of sharp pinnacles nicknamed ‘‘Moon Rocks’’. I meander around, stretching my legs from stone to stone, exploring the unnatural landscape.
When I get on my bike once again, I end my ascent marvellously at Heaven’s Gate Pass: once upon a time, this was the border of the H’mong kingdom, stretching all the way to Dong Van. To mark this boundary, the French colonisers built a huge, 150-centimetre-thick door on the top of this mountain.
Today, there’s only a battered sign in English and Vietnamese, shouting ‘‘Quan Ba Heaven Gate’’ to the ears of unforgiving mountain winds. But from this vantage point, the views over the Dong Van plateau are simply perfect.
Descending to the village of Tam Son, I find myself gaping at a series of mound-shaped hills. Two of them are almost identical, and rise next to each other … very much like the uncovered breasts of a buried giantess.
‘‘You are right: locals call them the ‘fairy bosoms’,’’ explains another young Vietnamese motorist who stopped to snap a picture.
I hope he’s joking about the bosoms, but he’s not. He’s travelling for work, to check the radio towers that connect these highlands to the world. We share laughter and a table in Tam Son, ordering fried noodles and beer, a nice interlude before parting ways along the serpentine Mien River.
I’m speeding to Yen Minh, my final destination for the day. As the road rises again from the valley, the horizon breaks into a forest of limestone peaks extending all the way to China.
Yen Minh is a one-horse town with no great nightlife, and it’s a good thing, for I must rest well to tackle my next day’s task: the 70km to Dong Van via Meo Vac.
This is some of Southeast Asia’s most stunning mountain landscape, and is better savoured slowly, stopping at every curve to admire the surreal rock formations that dot every inch of the landscape. Cut by a series of switchbacks and viewpoints perched high above a fantasy-like backdrop of limestone peaks, the mountains here look as if they were petrified in a game of hide and seek.
As I ride, the scenery reminds me of a classical Chinese painting, with all the stereotypical mist, cone-shaped rock pinnacles, green moss, and the odd lonely villager standing alone atop gravitydefying limestone corners.
As the French recognised, this treeless land is still the reign of the H’mong, who started migrating southward from China in the 18th century.
Fifteen kilometres before Dong Van, I take a short diversion, stopping my wheels at the charming wooden palace of the H’mong king. Built with earnings from the opium trade, Ha Giang’s former lifeline, this small but opulent castle is empty and welcoming, its three stone courtyards shaded by a patch of mountain forest.
I spend time traipsing between each room, observing the everyday life objects, photographs and kitchenware that evoke the past life of one of the world’s lesser known monarchs.
Back on the road, Dong Van is a relaxed village worth a coffee break. But it’s the following 22km to Meo Vac where the Ha Giang loop really gives its very best, climbing slowly over viridian Ma Pi Leng Pass.
Halfway there, I stop at a viewpoint towering above a vertical rock wall: the cliff plunges for a couple hundred metres to a deep river valley, the steepest I’ve seen along this ride. I take my time to marvel at the beauty of it all, because I already know that once in Meo Vac – a one-horse town of new, tall buildings at the side of a dusty road – this magnetic scenery will become just another fading memory of kilometres past.
On my third and last day, I wake up in Meo Vac to ride the 150km back to Ha Giang, completing the loop through a lower valley that reconnects at Yen Minh.
Compared with the fairy-tale pinnacles soaring between Dong Van and Meo Vac, riding here is far from breathtaking. But again, I enjoy zooming past viridian countryside that hardly sees any travellers. Truth be told, one shouldn’t complain too much if that doubtful God didn’t leave his best creations for last. - Traveller