CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
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: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
160 km from Muang Phônsavan to Muang Phônsavan, about 3 h 19 of riding. The stops in between: Site 2, Site 12 and back through Site 2. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
If you only visit one cluster of jars, make it Site 1, which is the closest to Phonsavan and the largest, with more than three hundred stone vessels scattered across a broad grassy hill. Locals call it Thong Hai Hin. The biggest jar here is the star, a hulking block of sandstone taller than a man and said to weigh several tonnes, and it leans against a shoulder of the hill with a gentle air of fatigue. Around it, jars of all sizes lie in clusters, some standing, some fallen, some split along natural fractures. A few have rounded holes in their sides, perhaps from old damage or shelling.
Read the complete Site 1 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Site 1 is where the day begins. Next is Site 2.
The Plain of Jars is not one site but many, and Site 2 sits on a hillside about fifteen kilometres from Phonsavan, the market town that serves as the base for visiting them. Phonsavan, with some thirty-seven thousand people, is a plain, post-war place of tin roofs and wide streets, rebuilt after the original town was destroyed in the bombing of the 1960s, and the jar sites lie scattered around it, along dirt tracks, in grassland and light forest.
Read the complete Site 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Site 2 comes up about 19 km into the recorded legs. Next is Site 12.
Imagine hundreds of huge stone jars scattered across a high plateau, some taller than a person, some lying on their sides, some cracked open by time or by bombs. That is the Plain of Jars in Xieng Khouang province, Laos, and nobody knows for certain who made them or why. Archaeologists believe they are about two thousand years old or more, and that they were connected with burial practices; local legend says they were made to brew rice wine to celebrate a great victory. Since 2019 a selection of the jar sites has been listed by UNESCO as the Megalithic Jar Sites in Xiengkhuang. Site 12 is one of the smaller groups, out in the countryside some twenty-five kilometres from the provincial capital, Phonsavan.
Read the complete Site 12 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 80 km into the recorded legs you reach Site 12. Next is back through Site 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Site 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Site 2, late in the day. Next is Site 1.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Site 1 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Site 1. That is the ride.
Site 1 → Site 2 is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Site 2 → Site 12 is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Site 12 → back through Site 2 is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Site 2 → Site 1 is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.