The tarmac ends at a border that no longer behaves like one. Łysa Polana sits on the Polish-Slovak line in the High Tatras, a clearing in spruce forest where the Białka stream comes down from the granite and the two countries simply hand the road to each other. Since both states joined Schengen there is no barrier and no queue, just a sign, a few stalls, and a lot of walkers in boots heading for the trails.
The ride here from Zakopane is the real content. You leave the town's tourist crush behind, roll through Poronin and the high farmland around Bukowina Tatrzańska, and the Tatra wall slowly builds on your right, long and jagged and much steeper than its modest height suggests. The road is mostly smooth and mostly straight, with gentle swings through meadows, and it carries heavy weekend traffic: coaches, cyclists, families, horse carts in season. Go early on a weekday, or accept that you will be following a minibus. Summer afternoons bring thunderstorms off the ridge fast, and the air turns cold the moment the sun goes.
This is górale country, the highlanders of Podhale, with their own dialect, their own wool waistcoats and a strong sense that the mountains belong to them. The food is the point of the stalls along the way: oscypek, the smoked sheep cheese pressed in wooden moulds, often grilled and served with cranberry jam, and hot tea with something in it if the day is damp. The Polish side is part of Tatra National Park, so the woods are protected, and brown bears, chamois and marmots live up in the high valleys, though you will hear more tourists than wildlife from the tarmac.
The road continues a short way to the car parks where hikers start the long walk to the lake of Morskie Oko, which is closed to private vehicles, so a motorbike will not get you any closer. Do not plan fuel here. Zakopane, about thirteen kilometres back, is the sensible place to fill the tank, with plenty of stations and every kind of food. Bukowina Tatrzańska has smaller options, and across the line in Slovakia the village of Ždiar is close. Park where the signs allow, because the national park rangers and the local police do check, and bring a warm layer even in July.