Epic scenery, killer climbs, village life… What’s not to like? The Ha Giang Loop in Northern Vietnam is only 300km (about 190 miles) long, but packs in a whopping 8000m (about 26,200’) of elevation gain. The climbs are steep and sustained, and so the route is normally done on motorbikes following the main roads in 2 to 4 days. We planned out a route on Komoot, which mostly followed the main loop, but occasionally leaving it for small roads and trails. It worked out to 7 days by bicycle, which kept the days shorter and the hills more manageable.
Getting There
Hanoi is the closest major city with an international airport. There are buses which go from the airport to Ha Giang. There are a number of Hostels close to the bus station in Ha Giang. We stayed at the Ha Giang Hostel. The hostels can help you book your bus tickets. We were short on time, so a local friend helped to arrange a minibus pickup from the airport to Ha Giang. Journey time was about 6 hours.
There are plenty of places you can rent a motorbike, but I don’t know if you can rent a bicycle in Ha Giang. Anyway, we brought our own, assembled them in the evening of our arrival, and set off early the next morning.
Day 1: Ha Giang – Tam Son
People get up early and by 6:30am, it was bustling in Ha Giang. Once outside of town, it became noticeably quieter. At about 8km from Ha Giang, we left the main QL4C road by taking a right turn across a small bridge, which put us onto backroads, which became village singletrack, before eventually rejoining the main QL4C route.
We rolled into Tam Son at about 2:30pm, as the heat of the day began to peak. We took an afternoon nap, went out for an early dinner, then went to bed early. It had been a tough day, although the stats don’t show it. 45km, 1400m elevation gain. A great introduction to what lay ahead for us. https://www.komoot.com/tour/714643108?ref=itd
Day 2: Tam Son – Yen Minh
We woke up at 5:30am, trying to get an early start to beat the heat, and also to cater to time lost in unpredictable road repair works.
Towns are usually at lower elevations, in the plains close to a river, so there’s usually a big hill to climb as soon as we leave town, and the idea of beating the heat by climbing that hill as early as possible was a good one, and that would be our routine for the rest of the trip. Rising between 5:30 and 6:00am, get breakfast, and rolling out of town before 7am.
We found a great place for the night, Bong Bang Homestay, where we had a charming room and had dinner with the host family. A bit of an easier day. 35km, 816m of climbing.
Yen Minh – Dong Van
This was to be our hardest day. We decided to simply follow the main QL4C route today, with no offroad detours. We took frequent breaks during the climbs. The goal was simply to survive today’s ride.
It turned out to be quite a longish day, and we were pretty tired by the time we reached town. It turned out to be the most touristy town along the route. There was supposed to be a pizza place, but it had not yet reopened from the pandemic. We found that quite a few places were in the process of reopening, and there were not very many international tourists yet. 47.5km, 1750m of climbing.
Dong Van – Meo Vac
This was a short riding day, with only 22km and 700m of climbing, but it would be our most scenic day.
About 7km out of Meo Vac, we detoured onto the ’Sky Path’, a scenic concrete village doubletrack that would become twisty dirt singletrack as the path rejoined QL4C. A highlight that should not be missed!
At Meo Vac, we found a place to stay with cute, round huts, and we could secure our bikes outsite the hut, then we took a taxi down to river for a sunset cruise.
Meo Vac – Mau Due
Originally, we had planned to bypass Mau Due and ride to Du Gia, and take a rest day there. But during the course of the previous days, we decided to break up the stage into two smaller days, and not take a rest day.
At about 23.5km from Meo Vac, we took a detour through a village. This not only bypassed some road repair works, but was also quite pretty riding pass black rocks. The path is not shown on any map, but I marked the start of the detour with a star near a ’duck’s head’ feature of the road, and the detour rejoins the main road at the ‘beak’.
Mau Due wasn’t anything exciting, but was found a pleasant enough place to stay and a nice place to eat, overlooking the river and rice padi fields. 35.3km, 656m
Mau Due – Du Gia
Leaving Mau Due was another big climb. We were used to the climbing by now, but the legs were still tired. We had the usual ’Pho’ (rice noodle soup with beef or chicken) for breakfast, and packed a ’Banh Mi’ (Vietnamese sandwich) for a snack on the road.
As a rough guide, the small restaurants along the route tend to sell only one dish. If it’s ’Pho’, that’s generally all they sell. One shop may sell just ‘Beef Pho’, and a nearby shop sells ‘Chicken Pho’. People wake up pretty early, and at 6am, shops and breakfast places are open. We tend to ride down the main street of town, and if we see people in a restaurant, we take a look at what they are eating and if it looks good, we sit down and have the same thing. Generally, we would have a ‘Pho’ for breakfast, pack a ‘Banh Mi’ for a snack on the road, have ‘Com Rang’ (fried rice) for lunch, and for dinner, steamed rice with mixed dishes. There weren’t any western options.
Du Gia was probably the prettiest village on route. Set along the banks of a large river, with a lot of homes set amongst the padi fields. We stayed at one of these, the highly rated Du Gia Hostel. 37km, 1264m.
Du Gia – Ha Giang
We didn’t have much information about the condition of the most direct road back to Ha Giang, the TL176 and QL34. Some reports we read indicated it was in bad condition, but we figured a bad road would make for some fun mountain biking.
We rode up the first hill out of town into a heavy fog, which cleared up on the descent. The rest of the day’s ride was very pleasant, cool, maybe a little drizzle on mostly quiet, rolling roads. We got into Ha Giang about two in the afternoon, packed up or bikes, and ordered pizza for dinner. 71.9km, 1535m.
The Gear
Ha Giang is generally warm, unless it rains or at one of the towns at higher elevation. We didn’t pack much. One set of riding clothes that we washed everyday and let dry overnight, and one set of clothes for sleeping. Toiletries in a small ziplok bag, iPhones for navigation, a charged powerbank, rain jacket and wind pants, a buff (never used), a spare pair of socks (never used), a light fleece top, and flipflops/crocs. We packed all this into Revelate saddlebags strapped to our hardtail mountain bikes, setup tubeless with fresh sealant added just before the trip.
We carried the usual tools (multitool with chainbreaker, pump, tire levers) and carried the usual spares (2 tubes, brake pads, chain link, hanger). We had 2 Petzl Binddi headlamps as front lights, and 2 lezyne rear lights. We also carried a small cable lock to secure the bikes. All this was stored in a Revelate Gas Tank on the top tube of my bike, except for the tubes, which went into my saddlebag.
Laura carried our passports and documents, our ‘Pokefi’ wifi hotspot, and money in a small handlebar bag. We also had a stash of emergency food (6 snickers bars, 6 instant coffees, little satchets of electrolyte drink mixes, a couple of fig bars and a bag of peanuts.
For camera gear, I carried a Sony a7c, the lightest interchangeable lens, full-frame camera with in-body image stabilization (on loan to me thanks to Sony Singapore), paired with 2 tiny lenses from Samyang: the 18mm f/2.8 and 75mm f/1.8. With a total weight of just under 900g, this was by no means lightweight, but it was manageable. I carried these in a roll top hip pack to isolate them from bumps and shock. I loved the camera, but on hindsight, I should have brought a different lens setup. I also brought a tiny tabletop tripod, which I carried in the saddlebag.
It’s too complex to get into that here but if anyone is interested, I’ll have a separate write-up for the Sony a7c for lightweight adventure photography, compared to point and shoot cameras with a 1″ sensor, like the Sony RX100s, and phone cameras.
adventure nomad 
Thanks! None. No camping or cooking gear.
Thanks. Nice write up. You took no sleeping gear?