Ten days in the north, four of them on foot

Day 1

Arrive Hanoi

Met at Noi Bai and driven the 35 kilometres into the old quarter, which takes 50 minutes outside rush hour. Nothing is scheduled. If you arrive before midday, the guide will meet you at 17:00 for a kit check: boots, waterproof, head torch, and the two litres of water capacity you will want from day four.

Day 2

Hanoi to Ha Giang

Away at 07:30 to clear the city before the school traffic. The first 150 kilometres are expressway; after Tuyen Quang the road narrows and slows, and the whole run takes about six and a half hours including a lunch stop at Vinh Tuy.

We break the sitting with a 45-minute leg-stretch on the tea terraces above Bac Quang in the late afternoon. Ha Giang town is a working border town rather than a destination, and the point of the night here is that it puts the plateau within reach in the morning.

Day 3

Up to the Dong Van plateau

The climb starts immediately. Quan Ba at 1,050 metres by mid-morning, then the long traverse through Yen Minh with its pine belt, and into Dong Van by late afternoon. Five and a half hours of driving, but almost none of it straight.

Two stops that are worth the time: the hemp weavers at Lung Tam, where the indigo vats are behind the workshop and you can see what four months of work on one length of cloth looks like, and a 4-kilometre walk down through Sa Phin to the vehicle.

Day 4

First walking day, Dong Van to Ma Le

The last hour on the ridge, when the stone fields below turn the colour of the sky and you can see three valleys at once

Out of Dong Van on foot at 08:00, north across the stone fields towards the border ridge. Fourteen kilometres and about 600 metres of ascent, taken in two climbs with the maize terraces between them. This is the day that tells you what the rest of the walking will be: there is no soil here worth the name, and every field you cross has been built by hand out of the gaps between limestone teeth.

Lunch is carried and eaten on the ridge, usually around 12:30. We reach Ma Le between 15:30 and 16:30 depending on how long the group stops. The homestay is a Hmong family house with the upstairs room described above, and dinner is cooked in the kitchen you walk through to get to it.

Day 5

Second walking day, and the Ma Pi Leng pass

Standing on the pass road late enough that the tour vans have gone and the river noise comes up the canyon

A shorter day on foot: 11 kilometres south-east off the plateau edge, 200 metres up and 550 down, finishing at the road by 13:00. The descent is the first properly slippery ground of the trip, and in June or July we allow an extra hour for it.

The vehicle takes the Ma Pi Leng pass in the middle of the afternoon. The road was cut by hand between 1959 and 1965 and runs 800 metres above the Nho Que river; we stop twice on the way over, once at the viewpoint everyone stops at and once at a bend three kilometres further on where nobody does. Meo Vac by 17:00.

Day 6

Meo Vac to the Du Gia valley

A three-hour transfer south on a road that was resurfaced in 2022 and is now merely narrow rather than broken. We arrive at Du Gia in time for lunch at the homestay.

The afternoon is a 9-kilometre loop along the river and up to the waterfall, flat for the first hour and then a short steep section on tree roots. Most people swim. This is the easiest of the four walking days and it exists partly to let the legs recover from day four.

Day 7

Third walking day, the Du Gia ridge

The longest day: 16 kilometres over the ridge behind the village and down into the next valley, with 700 metres of ascent in the first two hours. We leave at 07:00 to get the climb done before the heat, which in April means starting in the dark for twenty minutes.

There is no road contact between hour one and hour six. If somebody is going to find the walking harder than expected, this is the day it shows, and it is why we ask honest questions about fitness at the booking stage rather than at the trailhead.

Back at the homestay by 16:30. Second night in the same house, same room, and the second night is usually the one people remember, because by then you know which child belongs to which adult.

Day 8

Du Gia to Ba Be lake

Crossing the lake at the end of a driving day, which is a better arrival than any hotel lobby

The long transfer of the trip: six and a half hours east and south, 240 kilometres, through Bac Me and Na Hang. Two proper stops and a lunch. We do not dress this up — it is a driving day, and we run it after the hardest walking day for exactly that reason.

At the lake, the boat takes 40 minutes from the jetty to Pac Ngoi village, and we arrive with enough light to see the limestone walls on the far shore. The stilt house here is a step up from the Ha Giang homestays: private rooms with a wooden partition to the ceiling, and a bathroom shared between two rooms.

Day 9

Fourth walking day, Ba Be

A boat at 08:00 up the Nang river, through the Puong cave where the river runs under 300 metres of limestone and the bat colony lives in the roof, and out at Hua Ma.

The walk is 10 kilometres through forest and hill fields on the eastern side of the lake, with 350 metres of ascent and one exposed section along a cut ledge above the water. Different ground from Ha Giang entirely: wet, green, and under canopy for most of it. The boat picks the group up at 16:00.

Day 10

Ba Be to Hanoi, and out

Away at 08:00 for the 230-kilometre run to Hanoi, which takes about six hours with one stop. We drop at the airport or in the old quarter, as you prefer. For an international flight out the same evening we ask you to be on a departure after 19:00; anything earlier and we will put you in Hanoi the night before instead.