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ULRICH'S LAST OUTING -
Trail-biking and Ghost-hunting Round Thailand's Most Beautiful Mountain

It was to be Ulrich's last outing, at least on a trailbike.

He's a big blond Saxon, has lived years in the North, can oo kam muang - speak the Northern dialect - with the best of them, and loves to get into the backblocks, up into the hills. But he likes his comforts and next time, he said, he'd travel by Landrover.

We'd made slow, erratic progress coming up from Chiang Mai, so it was mid-day by the time we reached the gated trail that leads off the Farng road into the forest. There, where our trip effectively began, Ulrich was overcome by weariness and what he said was a fever, crashing out for half-an-hour in a bamboo lean-to. While waiting I talked to the vendors tending the food-stalls in front of the gate. They said the spirit-houses at the side of the road here are dedicated to Suwanna Khamdaeng, the legendary hero-protector of the North, and to his spirit-mistress Nang In Lao. Mediums come up from Chiang Mai in the ninth month of the lunar calendar to dance in their honour, they said, though they couldn't locate that more precisely in what you might call conventional time.

But that was appropriate enough because when Ulrich had woken and we'd passed the gate, we were in another dimension, neither time nor distance quite what they'd been before.

The track wound up into the forest at a civilized angle, rocky, dusty, leaf-shaded but not at all difficult. But at the Raming tea plantation we were told that from there on the going was chan - steep. So although it was only a little after four we decided to stay the night, not risk being caught out by darkness where the track was tougher. He did it again

It turned out to be a good move. A nice place with a well-appointed guest-house, the Raming tea plantation, so we had a comfortable night of it.

And steep it was in the morning, the track winding, doubling, snaking this way and that before bounding out onto a high swooping ridge. And while, without faltering, your Honda takes slopes that even a goat would fight shy of, the question was not of machines but of men - could we hold the bikes to the surface? Ulrich's answer in these circumstances is to go ever faster. A cloud of dust, a diminishing Teutonic guffaw. That's the last you see and hear of him.

Or it would be if he weren't an observant visitor to these mountains, stopping frequently.

"Look! Look over there at those confounded fellows, burning the forest!"

We tramp over to where a couple of villagers are working a felled tree. After the accident

"Now then, Uncle, what are you up to?" - this in the Northern dialect, and while it sounds outrageous to me, the villagers are amused by this tall, red-faced farang, giving as good as they get. And later, Ulrich positively quivers with excitement, virtually 'pointing' like a gun-dog.

"Look down there! You see that small flat area? Surely that's Muang Khong. There must be a track through to it somewhere…"

Obviously another trip in the making.

And always, floating in the blue air to our right, the massive elegance of pinnacled, turreted Doi Chiang Dao, the Mountain of the City of the Stars, the third highest and most spectacularly beautiful peak in the kingdom.

Now one of my reasons for coming on this trip - I'm not a complete masochist - was to check out an intriguing story a Thai friend had told me. It seems a forestry official spent a night up near Baan Ba Gieh and had a nightmare, dreaming he was being crushed, choked. On waking - this is the odd part - he found himself grappling with a man in a strange uniform, and in the course of their struggle the official said this man had - well - disappeared. Somewhat shaken, he told this story to the villagers, who assured him he'd been attacked by the ghost of Suwanna Khamdaeng, whose spirit house we'd seen down by the main road. These had been his hunting grounds during life, they said, not far from the cave on Doi Chiang Dao of his spirit-mistress Nang In Lao. The official, so my Thai friend said, impressed by his experience, set up a shrine somewhere near Baan Ba Gieh in honour of the hero. And while in these circumstances the skeptical Western reaction might be inclined to abstain from, rather than propitiate, spirits, I thought the story worth following up, at least to the extent of hearing what the local people had to say, and perhaps locating the hor puja or shrine.

Well, all along the trail we'd drawn a blank. At the Raming tea plantation, up at the Agricultural Cooperative, our would-be informants had tittered politely.

"Shrines? Spirits?" they said. "Never heard of them."

And it was the same at the eyrie of Baan Ba Gieh, the highest point of our journey. It takes time and patience tracking down ghosts in Thailand - or anywhere else, come to that. You're not likely to get much satisfaction dashing through, the way we were. So we had to be content with the flesh and blood of the present, if I can put it like that, rather than the shades of the past.

And content we were. It was cool up there. The air had a limpid quality to it, Doi Chiang Dao across its gulf seeming only a hand-span away. There's an agricultural station at Baan Ba Gieh, black chicks pecking at the dust, apricot trees bursting into starry blossom. And it was at this point that we made contact with the flesh and blood I've just referred to: the people of these hills. Polite, friendly, good to look at as the folks down in the cities are, it's out in the country, particularly up here in the mountains that you see the Thais at their best. We talked with the research station's workers and their wives and, as so often in the country, it was the men who were slightly shy and evasive, the women by contrast solid, forthright, down-to-earth. And while the chat didn't amount to much, we left with the feeling of having been in contact with the health and strength of the country, with the source of its continuing balance and vitality. Just ordinary people, but how attractive!

From Baan Ba Gieh the track was downhill and much improved - at least as far as we took it. But Ulrich, who'd been growling about the discomforts, vowing never to come out again on a trailbike, spotted a fork leading into a wildlife sanctuary and before I could protest, shot off up it. If I'd thought the going had been steep before, this track beat everything, a twisting monster of stoney verticality. Too dry-mouthed to swear, numbed by the thought of the bike sliding out from under me - oh, I've had my accidents - I followed grimly, three, four kilometers of panic park… Spirit house

To come out to Shangri La!

There we were, suddenly, on a broad, grassy saddle under Doi Chiang Dao. A path trickled east under the face of the mountain. Far below the beaded string of a trekking party was labouring up towards us. The Forestry Department has a set-up here, a small wooden office with a row of thatched huts. We talked briefly with a friendly official, who said we were at the end of the line for trailbikes. You could go on west into the inner sanctum of the mountain, and from there up to the highest peaks, but only on foot.

So we turned, retraced the switchback, dropping down the long dusty trail to the main road. On the way, Ulrich, who'd been driving with his usual inspired lunacy, had an accident, going too fast into a right-hand bend and meeting a surprised couple chugging up on the same side. At first it looked as if he was going to miss them, scrape by, but the bikes collided, bodies flying, glass and metal shattering. For a couple of seconds it looked nasty but our new friends were up and dancing almost as soon as they hit the ground. "Ooooh, jeb, jeb, jeb!" - "It hurts, it hurts," they sang melodiously - obviously no serious damage done. And Ulrich was wringing a bruised hand, laughing ruefully. He had to lay out a few hundred baht, which was fair enough as the crash had been his fault. Having dispensed Savlon for scratches, band-aid for cuts, repaired the bikes and taken some photographs, we parted good-humouredly. And how nice they were about it, the people we bumped into, typical Northerners.

Down then, down to the main road, the sun sinking behind us. There was a shallow ford near the bottom.

"That would make a good photograph," said Ulrich helpfully. "Shall I do it again?"

He did it again. I took the photograph, Doi Chiang Dao behind him - 'Ulrich's Last Outing', at least till the next one.

Text & Images © J.M.Cadet 2008
(The author lives and works in Chiang Mai, and his books - The Ramakien: the Thai Epic and Monks, Mountains and Magic among them - are on sale in major book shops.)