The argumentWhich way round?
Both. The question is which one, in which month — and the season changes the answer.
Same road. Two rides.
North first up the curves, or south first down the long one.
North first: up 107 and 1095 to Pai, on to Mae Hong Son, home down 108.
South first: down 108 to Hot and Mae Sariang, up to Mae Hong Son, back over 1095.
Day one. Short, hard, and done on fresh arms — which is the whole case for going this way round.
The last leg. Four days of hills already in your forearms, and the descent into Mae Taeng at the end of it.
A half-day that leaves the afternoon for Tham Lot.
The run into Pai, and an easy end to a hard day.
Westward, into the afternoon sun in the cool season. Leave early or accept it.
Eastward in the morning, sun behind. The better half of this leg's bargain.
The start of the way home, and the first easy riding in three days.
The last climb before Mae Hong Son.
Southbound, downhill on balance, and easy.
Northbound and climbing toward the end.
The last long haul before the four-lane run home.
Day one, and long. This is the leg that finds the rental bike's faults.
The end. Traffic, lanes, and a city.
The beginning, and the easiest hour of the trip.
The season picks the direction
Light, smoke, water and what is flowering. Each one argues for a different way round.
Season by direction
| Season | ↻ Clockwise | ↺ Counter-clockwise | Leans |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cool and dry · Nov–Feb | Dry tarmac on every descent, and the hardest riding done on day one while fresh. | The westward run into Mae Hong Son happens in the morning with the sun behind you, instead of head-on into a low afternoon sun. | Counter-clockwise The low sun is a real, physical argument and this is the season it bites. Counter-clockwise, narrowly. |
| Burning season · Mar–Apr | Pai — the mildest measured air on the circuit in March — is reached on the afternoon of day one and left behind. | The high sections come later in the trip, and mornings are always clearer than afternoons. | Either Direction barely matters. The clock does: ride early, stop by two. Or move the trip to May. |
| The rains · Jun–Oct | The technical descent into Pai is ridden on day one, before four days of wet roads have worn you down. | A long, forgiving first day on Route 108 lets you learn how a rented bike behaves in the wet before the hairpins. | Counter-clockwise Wet roads reward knowing the bike. Take the easy road first. And drop the 1263 either way. |
| Hot · Mar–May | The low, shadeless Chiang Mai–Hot section is ridden last, at the end of the trip. | That same hot low section is ridden first — which is worse in the afternoon and fine before eleven. | Clockwise Clockwise keeps you high and cool for the first three days. Do the low ground early or late, never at two. |
Clockwise or counter-clockwise
The case for clockwise. You hit the hardest riding on day one, fresh, on a light bike, before the panniers have settled and before four days of hills have taken your forearms. Day one is short — Chiang Mai to Pai is the least distance of any leg — so a slow, cautious first afternoon costs nothing. Pai is a soft landing with food and a mechanic. And the long, straight, fast southern run on Route 108 comes at the end, when you want to be pointing at home rather than at a hairpin.
The case for counter-clockwise. The first day is Route 108 to Mae Sariang: wide, sealed, four to six lanes as far as Hot, and 265 kilometres of two-lane after it that never asks anything sudden. That is a long, cheap day for bedding in a rented bike, finding out what the brakes do, and discovering the rear tyre is ten years old while you are still near a town that can change it. You arrive at the curve road knowing the machine. Mae Hong Son comes on night two or three rather than night three or four, which matters if you want a morning there.
Where they actually differ. Clockwise puts your hardest descent — 1095 dropping into the Pai valley — early. Counter-clockwise puts it last, on tired arms, and on Route 1095 tired arms are a real argument. Against that: counter-clockwise gets the rental bike's unknowns out of the way on the forgiving road, which is the same argument pointed the other way.
Inference — the disagreement survives because both sides are right about different riders. A confident rider on a familiar bike should go clockwise and enjoy day one. A rider collecting an unknown rental should go counter-clockwise and spend day one finding out what they have got.
And then the season changes the answer, which is the part the bar argument usually misses. See the grid on /which-way/.
The season picks the direction
Light. The circuit is ridden in a day-sized bite and most riders leave late morning. Clockwise, the long westward run from Pangmapha into Mae Hong Son is an afternoon leg, and in the cool season the sun is low and ahead of you on a two-lane road with oncoming traffic. Counter-clockwise puts that same stretch in the morning with the sun behind. Inference — this is the single most underrated argument in the whole question, and it gets stronger the closer to the solstice you go.
Smoke, March and April. The measured record says the smoke is worst in the afternoon of a still day and that it is worse in the basins than on the ridges. Riding a leg early gets the clearer air. Counter-clockwise reaches Mae Hong Son and the Pai basin later in the trip and later in the morning; clockwise gets Pai over with on the afternoon of day one. Inference — in the smoke months, whichever direction you pick, ride early and stop at two, and the direction matters less than the clock.
Water, June to October. Route 1263 — the Khun Yuam to Mae Chaem cut — is the part of this network that the rains actually close off as a sensible option, and it is also the steepest. In the wet, drop it and stay on 108 and 1095. That removes one of the arguments for counter-clockwise, because the cut is easier taken as a descent toward Mae Chaem, which is the clockwise... no: the cut is ridden Khun Yuam to Mae Chaem going counter-clockwise only if you have already come down 108. Read the leg page.
Flowers, November. Doi Mae U-Kho above Khun Yuam turns yellow with Tithonia diversifolia for a few weeks in November, and Khun Yuam sits on the southern leg. Clockwise puts Khun Yuam on day three or four, counter-clockwise on day two. If the bloom is the reason for the trip, go the way that reaches Khun Yuam on a morning.
Mist, November to January. The sea of mist off Doi Kong Mu and at Pang Ung is a dawn phenomenon, so it requires sleeping in Mae Hong Son and getting up. Both directions can deliver that; what matters is that Mae Hong Son gets two nights, not one.