IN A NARROW LANE OUTSIDE of Mai Chau, I stop my bike to let trafic pass.
A water buffalo lumbers towards me, taking up the entire space of the lane. Its calf wanders behind, trailed by a wizened farmer. In these rural passages, this is as close to a truck, sidecar and driver as I will see.
I’m cycling through the valleys that run like a delta from the town of Mai Chau in northern Vietnam. Pyramids and domes of limestone rise out of the valleys, creating an inland version of Halong Bay. Everything between the mountains, however, is almost ruler-lat, with rice terraces underscoring the heavily forested peaks in an archetypal Asian rural scene. It’s a landscape so beautiful, and yet so kind on my legs, a cyclist might have created it.
For two days I’ll pedal through these valleys without any real destination – A to B is not the goal here. I’m riding simply to immerse myself in the place and its rural life. Roads lead to lanes that lead to unmarked trails along the levees of the rice terraces. Nowhere is out of bounds to a bike. I’m here in rice-harvest season, a time when the valleys, layered with rice terraces, become a living landscape. At dawn, clouds of smoke already rise from the ields as workers burn the residue from the harvest. Rice harvesters splash through the sodden ields, scythes in hand, trousers rolled to their thighs.