It had been quite some time since I rode a dirt bike. While being in Chiang Mai, gazing every morning at the mountains surrounding it, and fancying the scores of coarse dirt roads branching all over their slopes, I decided that it could be just about the right time to reflate my affiliation to these devilish motorbikes for a day.
The original idea was to rent a 2-stroke racing motocross, but after some search, the chance of finding such a thing for rental turned out to be minimal. The best alternative I found was a Honda CRF250 enduro bike, which is still a kind of bike appropriate for having lots of fun driving in the mountains. There are several rental places around the city offering the exact same kind of bike, probably for a fixed price of 800 baht, which could possibly be negotiable, but it’s still a fair price, I think.
So I got the bike and headed west. It was around noontime, the heat was hardly bearable, and the time I spent manoeuvring amid the traffic jam till I finally managed to exit the city, was not of any particular value of content. As soon as I managed to escape though, being free to raise speed and feel the cool breeze bumping against my face, the fun had started. I had got the road leading to Ban Hmong Doi Pui (just a village, or something, with a strange name), I tried quite a few dirt roads which soon led me to a dead-end, and I drove quite a good deal up the mountain before I finally managed to find my trail and made it deep into the forest.
For the next few hours, I do not really know where exactly I was, as I didn’t care that much. I was rather busy indulging in the excessive pleasure of taming the powerful motorcycle while also marvelling at the beauty of the forest. The paths were plenty. I got to choosing among them intuitively on the spot, thus moving randomly around the mountain, till, after all, at about dusk time, I found myself back at the road near Huay Tung Tao lake. Quite exhausted by that time, perfectly satisfied with my day though, I started driving back towards the city.
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