Long readsThe ten minutes after you stop

Nobody puts this in an itinerary and it is most of what the trip is made of.

Inference — a motorcycle removes the glass. You arrive somewhere already smelling it — wet leaf litter on the climbs, woodsmoke through the villages, hot dust where the tarmac has been in the sun, and the particular sweetness of teak forest after rain. None of that reaches you through a car window.

Then you stop, and there is a gap. The engine is ticking. Your ears, which have had wind in them for an hour, come back. Whatever it was — the valley, the chedi, the reservoir with mist on it — has been there the whole time and you can finally hear it.

That happens six or seven times a day on this circuit, because the road is short and the stops are frequent. It is the reason people who have ridden it once talk about it the way they do, and it is completely unphotographable, which is why nobody puts it on a list.

Inference — the practical version, if there has to be one: plan fewer kilometres than you think. The ten minutes is the product. The riding between them is how you get more of them.