Young Flower H’mong girls en route for the Bac Ha market.
Photo: Jean Claude Allonneau.

High Tonkin by bicycle / 24 days

New bicycle trip around the North of Vietnam.

With the technical support of the FFCT (La Fédération française de Cyclotourisme).

For those of you who love nature and who love to experience different cultures, the borders of the Hoang Lien Son Mountain chain in the Tonkin, surely the wildest in the whole of Vietnam, await you. This area is renowned not only for it’s markets, which bring together all the stunningly colourful tribes of the region - heaven for ethnologists, but also for it’s terrassed ricefields and thatched stilt houses...We’ll travel these massifs by bicycle to really begin to discover the High Tonkin region, which offers a breathtakingly beautiful scenery of mountain peaks and and karstic rocks.

Cycle tour in 24 days. The successfully completed Tonkin Spring Schedule of 2004, with the participation of 30 cyclists - FFCT members, commemorated the 50th Anniversary of Dien Bien Phu (7th May, 1954).

Note:

Vietnam has been in the middle of enhancing and improving it’s roads, especially in the mountaineous North for a period of time now. The progress of these roadworks, however, is extremely difficult to predict, this means that technical details concerning kilometres, altitude, gradient, potential difficulties etc....are not exceptionally precise.

Legs of the journey

HANOI - HOA BINH - SONLA - TUAN GIAO - DIEN BIEN PHU - LAI CHAU - PHONG THO - SAPA - BAC HA - TUYEN QUANG - LAKE BA BE - CAO BANG - LANG SON – QUANG NINH and HALONG.

North-west:

Depart from La Ferme du Colvert

From the beautiful scenery of Hoa Binh around the Black River (the most important tributary of the Red River), which protects and nourishes many minority groups such as the Muong, D’zao, Thai...

By bicycle, with some boat and car transfers, from one village to another.. Son La to the Dien Bien Phu Valley, we’ll meet the locals. With an incredible boldness, these people hang on to the river’s edge, regardless, between sky and earth.

A few days of little cycle rides around the high altitude village of Sapa, not far from China and a stone’s throw away from Mount Phansipan at an altitude of 3160m. Meet the Red D’zao, Flower and Indigo H’mong, HaNhi, Zay,Thai tribes....whose weaving secrets and embroidery dyeing, as well as their beautiful headdresses, are passed down between women from generation to generation....

From Tuan Giao crossing Phong Tho until Bac Ha, we’ll then dive into the mythical world of the Khomu, Thai and Nhang.... who hold onto their beautiful traditions. Their land proves to be one of the most beautiful in the whole of Vietnam.

The High Plateaus - magnificant and breathtaking scenery, an amazing mosaic of different ethnic minority groups. We’ll experience this wonderful world of a bygone era, where the local tribes of the White and Red H’Mong and the Black and White Thai live at one with the land...