↻ Clockwise
Day one. Short, hard, and done on fresh arms — which is the whole case for going this way round.
LegsChiang Mai to Pai
เชียงใหม่ – ปาย
Three hundred and ninety-five curves in ninety-five kilometres, and a town at the end of them.
::::=UT=:::: · CC BY-SA 3.0130km
580curves
60hairpins
3–4hours
40km fuel gap
The route
↺ Counter-clockwise
The last leg. Four days of hills already in your forearms, and the descent into Mae Taeng at the end of it.
Route 1095
8.93curves per kilometre — its hardest two kilometres
What it is
Route 107 north out of the city to the Route 1095 turn, then over the hills to Pai. The shortest leg of the circuit by distance and the one people most often underestimate by time.
The long version
The first thirty-five kilometres are Route 107, which is a wide, busy road out of a city and is not what you came for. The ride begins at the turn.
Inference — measured off the OSM trace, the Mae Malai to Pai section of Route 1095 is 94.5 kilometres carrying 580 curves at a 25-degree threshold, 65 of them hairpins — 4.28 curves a kilometre, the densest sustained stretch on the whole circuit. The hardest two kilometres measured anywhere on 1095 are in here, at 7.45 curves a kilometre.
What that means in practice is that the hundred kilometres takes three hours, not ninety minutes, and it takes longer than that if you stop — which you will, because the climb out of the Mae Taeng valley has the views.
This is also the leg the merchandise is about. The sign says 1,864 curves; the count over this span says 395 at 25 degrees, 450 at 15. What 1,864 would mean over 94.5 kilometres is a curve every 51.9 metres.
What it asks of you
| Smallest sensible bike | Automatic scooter, 110–160cc |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | You have ridden hills before |
| Pillion | Fine |
A 110 automatic does this leg every day of the week. It does it slowly, and it needs the descents taken in stages.
The climb is fine loaded; it is the Pai descent where the extra weight is felt.
Runs with
- roadRoute 1095 — The road it is mostly on.
- townPai — The town at the end.
- story1,864 curves — The argument this leg is the subject of.
- hazardBrake fade — The descent into Pai is where this happens.
- legPai to Soppong — The next one, clockwise.
- legThe Samoeng warm-up — The day that tells you whether this one will be fun.
Named here by
- legThe Samoeng warm-up — What it is a rehearsal for.
- roadRoute 107 — The leg it starts.
- roadRoute 1095 — The first half of it, clockwise.
- townPai — The leg that ends here, and the curves that get you here.
- stopHuai Nam Dang — The leg it sits on top of.
- stopPai Canyon — The leg it sits at the end of.
- springTha Pai hot springs — The leg whose forearms it is for.
- story1,864 curves — Where you meet the first six hundred of them.
- storyClockwise or counter-clockwise — Day one clockwise, day four counter-clockwise, and it is a different road each way.
Where each claim comes from
| Field | Tier | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default | harvested | Curve and distance measurements off the OSM polyline — This project | |
| text.story | inference | curve figures measured off OSM; timing is this project's estimate and is not sourced | |
| text_th | inference | written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated |
Sources
- Curve and distance measurements off the OSM polyline — This project
- ทางหลวงแผ่นดินหมายเลข 1095 — Wikipedia (th)
- OpenStreetMap — OpenStreetMap contributors
cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there