Going Loopy: The Konglor Loop

Of course, we only found out afterwards that our route through the heart of Laos was considered foolhardy, inadvisable, impossible even. During the dry season the five kilometre stretch of dirt road along Route 1E from Tha Lang to Laksao is rough but navigable by moped; in the rainy season, as we discovered first-hand, it is not. It wasn’t the first trial we had faced, and nor was it to be our last.

Until this point, our six-week whistle-stop tour of Southeast Asia had felt more like a holiday than “travelling”, which was the vaguely understood intended ethos, taking in as it did the renowned backpacker drinking spots like Bangkok and Vang Vieng. It had become tedious, and we wanted to leave the safety of a backpacker trail so well-trodden that the authorities had paved it. Thus, we headed for the Konglor Loop, a four-day 450km circuit by moped through rural south-central Laos, starting in the border town of Thakhek and culminating with a stop at Konglor Cave, a 7km river that runs under a mountain.

Film buff that I am, the idea of five guys on bikes going through (relatively) uncharted territory sparked Motorcycle Diaries fantasies, and I named my bike La Poderosa (the Mighty One) after Che Guevara’s rickety Norton 500 that bore him and Alberto Granado unreliably through the Latin American heartland on their ‘legendary gap year’ (Peter Bradshaw, 2004).

La Poderosa

The first day broke us in gently, with just a near-death experience and a puncture as night was settling in that left two of our party sheltering under a stifling net from the vast swarms of mosquitos, while the other three drove through said swarms for an hour in pitch-darkness to find the well-hidden guesthouse and rescue. It also gave us a taster for the Laos landscape, which is unlike anywhere I’ve ever been. Lush, flat plains give way abruptly to great eruptions of rock and miniature islands breasted the still lagoons of Nam Theun. More morbidly, forests of dead trees stand lifeless in grey lakes – a result of artificial flooding we later found out, as were the ethereal lagoons – but at the time we wondered if it was a sad reminder of the extensive bombing Laos suffered during the Vietnam war.

Par for the course for Laos, pretty much. Wow.

Much of the second day was spent stuck fast in thick mud that we were entirely unprepared for. We had gone around 200m before the mud was thick enough to choke our engines and clog our tyres. It took two hours to extract ourselves, but only ten minutes to get stuck again. Had a truck with enough space in the back for five bikes not fortuitously rumbled past we would have been truly stricken – water-logged, overheated engines, empty batteries, choked wheels, the works. A tortuous, strength-sapping, interminable journey over rough terrain spent propping our bikes up in the back of this truck until we reached a mechanics was the better option. Lak Sao, a dusty, hospitable town not far from the border with Vietnam, came into view shortly before dusk.

Even this doesn't quite capture how tricky the mud was

It took an hour for this feller to fix Bailey's chain, but it snapped immediately anyway

On the third day endless mechanical problems, including a chain that snapped twice, ensured that we arrived at the entrance to Konglor Cave just in time to see the attendant closing the gates for the day. It had taken us six hours to cover 45km on good roads. The following day we got up early and, with the bikes in good working order, we rattled through the route of the previous day, including the spectacular Konglor cave, by midday. From there: 140km back to Thakhek. Other than a puncture in the middle of nowhere and the heaviest rain storm I had ever seen, we were able to power through and made it back before nightfall. It had been a testing four days that had forced us into self-reliance, but we were rewarded with spectacular scenery, friendly locals that treated us like celebrities purely because of the colour of our skin, and a real sense of accomplishment.

View from within Konglor Cave