I was happy, more than happy, to leave Mandalay with the 4.30am train to Hsipaw after three days. The train takes much longer and is as expensive as the bus but the experience is worth the effort. I booked a 2nd class ticket but when I arrived the station the whole 2nd class, inclusive my seat, was already packed with families and luggage and I didn’t want to chase them away so I boarded the 1st class, prepared to pay a supplement. Maybe it was because my ticket for foreigners was written in english only and the conductor didn’t understand what it sais or he just didn’t care but I didn’t pay more for my cushioned seat. The eight hours (for 200km) were a little bit rickety but the landscape outside was really nice and I had a good conversation with a monk who sat beside me. The highlight was when the train passed the Gokteik Viaduct, a steel bridge over a gorge out of the colonial era that was the
Hsipaw is a nice small city in the mountains, with a comfortable climate (not soo superhot in the day and pretty cold at night) and great surroundings. It’s only a twenty minutes hike and you’re in the middle of the mountains, just surrounded by rice paddy fields, rural farmers, small water streams and water buffaloes. I did some nice walks out into the countryside in my first two days, before the real adventure 
started. Ian, a guy from the USA and me rented motorbikes and planned to do the “Namhsam Circle”, a route that is famous for it’s unbelievable bad “road” conditions.
Guidebooks tried to warn us to take this route, for example the Lonely Planet sais about Namhsam: “…a few brave souls come here by motorcycle, but the road is long, the route confusing and you have to break the journey overnight. … There are no permit restrictions for visiting Namhsam town and hiking to nearby villages, but the shocking condition of the road and the unreliable transport links deter all but the most dedicated travellers.” Not us! If the LP sais something like this, you should go and do that all the more.
Equipped with a handdrawn map provided by Mr Bike, the only guy who rents motorbikes in Hsipaw we started in morning. After a few kilometer Ian’s chain jumped off the first time and the 2nd, 3rd and 4th time should follow until we broke down directly in front of a motorbike repair bamboo hut For 0,50US$ the guy fixed the problem in a few minutes and we continued. The road is paved for the first 20kilometer, until you take the leftturn to Namhsam, from there on, for the next 200km, the full Namhsam Circle (this name is an invention by Ian and me – it’s not commonly known like this) it’s 
just a more or less narrow, bumpy and rough dirt track. And you shouldn’t have any illusions that the road conditions will be better at some point: No, they just become worse! After the intersection to Namhsam it really starts to be frightening and challenging, I can’t really describe how bad the road is, because even if I tell you that it’s the most terrible road you can imagine, you can’t imagine it, you have to see it. Before this road the worst “road” I’ve ever seen (with a four wheeled jeep!) was the way to the Naiman Nuur lakes in Mongolia, but I’m really sorry for this adventurous way, it’s no longer the number one. Congratulations instead to the Namhsam Circle, with flying colours you’re my official number one of the worst roads I’ve ever seen.
In the first hour you only think “Oh my god, I’ll never survive that” before the adrenaline kicks in and it starts to make fun. You have to be fully concentrated and mistakes are punished immediatly. Ian fell 4 times in the 200km, luckily I could avoid that. Beside the road conditions the landscape is beautiful. The area really earns the nickname “Asian Switzerland”. It’s pretty comparable to the Yunnan area around Dali and Lijiang in China, it’s anyway not really far away (to the chinese border it’s maybe 100km) from there. The area is a tea plantation zone what is 
responsible for the miserable street condition, too. The tea harvest is in the middle of the rainy season when a lot of overloaded trucks queue up this windy road and get stuck what results with ruts that are sometimes 1,5m deep. The sleepy village of Namhsam lies on the halfway in the circle and is a logical stopover point because there’s a very basic guesthouse. The village is pretty nice but pretty boring, too. It completely shuts down by 7pm so better have dinner before that 
As I said the guesthouse is very basic and ideal if you don’t want to sleep. The walls paper-thin and you can hear every noise from your neighbours room (in my case it felt like a strong snoring chinese man is lying directly beside me), but the thing that was really a pain in the ass for me that night was, that I had some stomach problems and had to use the toilet a few times. Of course there was no electricity and the toilet was one of the squat version toilets, really not convenient when you just have light from your mobile phone. When I ran out of toilet paper after my second visit I had to become inventive… I spare you the details! 
The next day I felt already a little bit better but actually I had no choice rather than to go on the motorbike and ride back to Hsipaw. But it worked. The road was even getting worse than the day before but after an hour the adrenaline kicked in again and we finally made it back to Hsipaw in 7 or 8 hours. Inbetween we stopped in a Palaung village for lunch. The people on the way are really great anyway, everybody shouts “bye bye” to you (strange, everywhere else in Asia they shout “hello” but in Myanmar everybody shouts a friendly bye bye) and waves. Especially the children of course are getting crazy when they see you. When we finally got back on the paved road we both intuitively raised our fists. It was an adventure and it was really great but it’s just recommended for experienced drivers, if you think you are experienced enough to do that, go for it. Namhsam and the whole area is probably one of the most off-the-beaten-track destinations you are allowed to go to Myanmar, really unspoiled and beautiful, so don’t miss it!
When we arrived at our guesthouse, where Mr Bike was already waiting for us, we asked him how many people rented motorbikes and did this trip on their own so far. He answered: “Oh, not a lot, I think maybe 5!” . Somehow that was not really surprising for us. 
Anyway, we both thought that it is a little bit irresponsible from Mr Bike just to give us the motorbikes and let us go to do the circle. He knew where we wanted to go and he knows about the conditions but didn’t ask any questions if we have a license, how experienced we are etc. If a usual backpacker who rented a motorbike in Ko Phangan where he went around the island for a day without any accidents and now thinks that he’s able to ride a motorbike and he can manage it to go up to Namhsam, than I simply predict his death on this route. For example, Ian, the american guy, lives in Asia since 8 years and drives a motorbike since 8 years without any accidents. In this 200km he fell 4 times, good luck that he always was on a pretty low speed and nothing serious happened to him. And I was just lucky. If the trip would have been longer, let’s say three or four or five days it would have been just a matter of time when I would have to pick up the motorbike from the ground, too.
We were pretty proud that we did and survived the circle and Mr Bike was somehow, too, and invited us for dinner with his family the next evening. I usually planned to lefave already the next day but this dinner invitation was a good reason to stay one more day and to relax (my asscheeks definitely needed a break, too).