Rice Terrace Clusters of Kiangan: Nagacada and Rice Terrace Clusters of Banaue: Battad
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
79 km
Riding-time estimate
1 h 22
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
79 km from Monamon to Monamon, about 1 h 22 of riding. On the way it passes Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao, Rice Terrace Clusters of Banaue: Battad and back through Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,550 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Rice Terrace Clusters of Kiangan: Nagacada
Nagacadan is a village in Kiangan, in the province of Ifugao in northern Luzon, and its rice terraces are shaped like a vast green amphitheatre, with stone-walled steps climbing the slope in tight curves above the Ibulao river. The Ifugao rice terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras are UNESCO listed, and older guidebooks describe them as two thousand years old, though more recent research suggests that many of the surviving terraces are younger, perhaps a few centuries. What nobody doubts is the effort: dry-stone walls, bamboo irrigation pipes and generations of hand labour, all passed on without machines.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Rice Terrace Clusters of Kiangan: Nagacada is where the day begins. Next is Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao.
2. Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao
High in the mountains of northern Luzon, the hillsides are carved into thousands of rice terraces, rising in curved steps from the river to the ridge, and the Mayoyao cluster is one of five inscribed by UNESCO in 1995 as the Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras. The cluster is in Ifugao province, about seven kilometres from the town of Lagawe, and the terraces here feel more intimate than those of the better-known Banaue, with the houses of the villages set among the paddies and the forest above.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao comes up about 16 km into the recorded legs. Next is Rice Terrace Clusters of Banaue: Battad.
3. Rice Terrace Clusters of Banaue: Battad
Nobody knows exactly how old the rice terraces of Ifugao are. The popular figure of two thousand years has been questioned by archaeologists, who suggest that the great walls went up more slowly and perhaps more recently, but the effort involved remains staggering. The Ifugao people shaped these steep slopes in the Cordillera mountains of northern Luzon by hand, building stone and mud retaining walls, digging channels to bring water from the forest above, and planting rice on narrow steps that climb the mountainside in tiers. Laid end to end, the walls would run for many thousands of kilometres. The terraces were listed as a World Heritage landscape in 1995, and Battad, with its rice fields arranged in a bowl like a natural amphitheatre, is one of the clusters people come to see.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Back at Rice Terrace Clusters of Kiangan: Nagacada. That is the ride.
Leg by leg
Rice Terrace Clusters of Kiangan: Nagacada to Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao
Rice Terrace Clusters of Kiangan: Nagacada → Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao to Rice Terrace Clusters of Banaue: Battad
Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao → Rice Terrace Clusters of Banaue: Battad is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Rice Terrace Clusters of Banaue: Battad to back through Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao
Rice Terrace Clusters of Banaue: Battad → back through Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao to Rice Terrace Clusters of Kiangan: Nagacada
back through Rice Terrace Clusters of Mayoyao: Mayoyao → Rice Terrace Clusters of Kiangan: Nagacada is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.