Ha Giang and the north: 14 days in the mountains

This trip involves long days in a vehicle or on the back of a motorbike, simple accommodation for four of the nights, and weather that can take your views away. It is also the trip our clients write to us about afterwards.

Who it suits: travellers comfortable with 4 to 9 miles a day on steep, uneven and often slippery ground, and with mountain roads. No technical difficulty and no altitude problem, the plateau tops out around 5,000 feet (1,500 m), but the days are long and the comfort is basic.

Day by day

Day 1: Arrive in Hanoi. Transfer, rest, an early dinner nearby.

Day 2: Hanoi. A half day on foot through the Old Quarter and the French Quarter, then the Museum of Ethnology, which is the right preparation for the north: it explains who the Hmong, Dao, Tay and Lo Lo are before you meet them.

Day 3: Hanoi to Ha Giang city. About six hours north by private car on the improved road. Not a beautiful drive for the first half and there is no way to avoid it. Afternoon arrival, a night in a simple town hotel, and a briefing with your rider or driver about the days ahead.

Day 4: Ha Giang to Dong Van. The day the trip starts properly. Up through the Quan Ba twin mountains, the Tham Ma switchbacks, and out onto the Dong Van karst plateau, a UNESCO geopark of bare grey rock with maize planted in every crack. About five hours of driving with frequent stops. Night in Dong Van.

Day 5: Dong Van. A walking day rather than a driving one. Six to seven miles through Hmong and Lo Lo villages below the plateau rim, with about 1,300 feet (400 m) of climbing, a village lunch, and the Lung Cu flag tower at the northernmost point of Vietnam in the afternoon. If your dates fall on a Sunday we time this for the Dong Van market instead, which is where the whole plateau comes to trade and is not staged for anybody.

Day 6: Dong Van to Meo Vac. Short in distance and the best hour of the trip: the Ma Pi Leng pass, cut into a cliff 5,000 feet above the Nho Que river. We stop at the top, walk a section of the old sky path, then take a boat up the Tu San canyon on the green river below. Afternoon in Meo Vac. Sunday markets here too, if the timing works.

Day 7: Meo Vac to Du Gia. Off the main loop on rougher road into a valley of rice terraces. A four-mile walk in the afternoon down to a waterfall you can swim in. Night in a homestay: mattresses on a wooden floor, a shared bathroom, a family dinner and rice wine you will be offered repeatedly.

Day 8: Du Gia to Hanoi. The price of the loop. Two hours out to Ha Giang, then six back to Hanoi. We break it properly and you arrive in the evening to a good hotel and a shower.

Day 9: Hanoi to Pu Luong. Four hours south-west into a nature reserve of terraced valleys, stilt houses and wooden water wheels turning in the irrigation channels. Afternoon arrival at a lodge with a pool overlooking the terraces, which after Ha Giang feels like an extravagance.

Day 10: Pu Luong, trekking. The best walking day of the trip: about eight miles between Thai and Muong villages, roughly 2,000 feet (600 m) of ascent, on paths and terrace bunds. Lunch in a village house. Wet clay after rain is slippery and there are leeches between May and September, which are harmless and unpleasant.

Day 11: Pu Luong. A shorter loop of five miles in the morning, a bamboo raft down the Cham river, and the local market if the five-day cycle lands right. Afternoon free.

Day 12: Pu Luong to Ninh Binh. Two hours east. Afternoon boat through the flooded caves at Trang An after three o’clock, when it empties out.

Day 13: Ninh Binh to Hanoi. Mua Cave at opening, about 500 steps for the view over the whole valley, then two and a half hours back to Hanoi. Last night, and a dinner worth having.

Day 14: Departure.

What is included

All accommodation including four nights of simple mountain guesthouses and homestays, all meals on the Ha Giang and Pu Luong days, a private car and driver throughout or an experienced local rider with a pillion seat on the loop days if you prefer the bike, the Ha Giang border-zone permit, an English-speaking mountain guide on days 4 to 8 and on both Pu Luong trekking days, the Nho Que river boat, all entrance fees, a full day-by-day document, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant in Tel Aviv and our Hanoi office throughout.

Honest notes

The accommodation in Ha Giang is simple. Clean, warm enough, family-run, and nothing like the hotels elsewhere on your trip. Two of the four nights have shared or basic bathrooms. That is the plateau, not a compromise we made on your behalf.

We will not put you on a motorbike alone. Foreign driving licences are generally not valid in Vietnam without a local conversion, which means an accident is uninsured, and the loop has a bad record. You ride pillion with a rider we know, or you go by car. If self-driving the loop is the point of the trip for you, we are the wrong company.

Weather takes the views. From December to February the plateau sits in cloud and drizzle for days at a time and it is genuinely cold, near freezing at night. June to August brings landslides that close sections of road. October and November are the best weeks, with buckwheat flowering across the plateau in late October, and March to May is the second window.

The drive on days 3 and 8 is long. Twelve hours of road in total, and there is no train, no flight and no shortcut. It is what the far north costs.

What we would skip. The Sapa version of this trip. The town has been overbuilt into something close to a building site and the trekking around it is now busy. Ha Giang is what people mean when they imagine Sapa.

Built with our Hanoi office, whose drivers have run the loop more times than we can count.

Related

• Vietnam: the complete guide
• The Ha Giang loop, honestly
• Classic Vietnam in 16 days