CYCLING TOURER · THE WORLD AT HANDLEBAR HEIGHT
See it from the saddle.
Reviews of the best cycling tours on earth, city by city. Volcano descents in Bali and rail trails in New Zealand, Mekong back-lanes and Tokyo backstreets, easy e-bike days and the climbs the pros train on. Road or electric, we read the reviews so you book the right ride.
Worth the airfare
Three rides you can only do in one place on earth.
You can hire a bike almost anywhere now. But a freewheel down the Batur volcano, a flat day through the Mekong’s back-lanes, and the old goldfields rail trail through Central Otago belong to those roads alone.
Off the volcano
The Batur Downhill
A van lifts you and the bikes to the rim of the Batur caldera, then it is almost all downhill: through Kintamani’s coffee country, past temples and rice terraces stepped into the hillside, freewheeling into Ubud with a Balinese lunch waiting. Barely a pedal stroke uphill and one of the great descents in Asia.
- 1 Electric Cycling Tour of Ubud with Free Hotel Transfer and Lunch
- 2 Ubud: Downhill Cycling with Volcano, Rice Terraces and Meal
- 3 Half-Day Ubud Electric Cycling Tour to Tirta Empul Water Temple
Into the delta
The Mekong Back-Lanes
You leave the city behind, cross to the islands by ferry, and ride the flat back-lanes of the Mekong Delta between coconut palms and fruit orchards. Craft villages making rice paper and coconut candy, a sampan through the channels, a cooking class with what the garden grew. Genuinely flat, genuinely far from the tour buses.
- 1 Cai Be Mekong Delta Tour: Cooking Class, Cycling & Craft Villages
- 2 Mekong Day Trip Explore Village Bicycle CookingClass Group 12 Pax
- 3 VIP Mekong Delta Adventure Cycling & Kayaking – Private Day Trip
On the rail trail
The Otago Central
New Zealand’s original rail trail runs on the easy gradient of an old goldfields railway: tunnels and viaducts, schist gorges and big-sky tussock country, gold-rush pubs to stop at along the way. No traffic, hardly a climb, just the South Island rolling past as you turn the pedals.
- 1 Otago Central Rail Trail One Day Wonder Cycle tour
- 2 Lake Dunstan Discovery Day Tour by eBike with Shuttle
- 3 Unlock Your Potential with a Private mountain bike lesson.
The one everyone clips in for
If you only ride one of these.
More travellers book this one than any other on the site. A safe first ride when you are still finding your legs in a new country.
The classics
The World’s Most Popular Cycling Tours
Ubud, the Mekong, Tokyo, Ninh Binh, Chiang Mai. The rides travellers book first, in the places they most want to pedal through.
Where to ride
Pick the country, then the road.
Vietnam for flat delta lanes and karst valleys. Indonesia for the volcano descents. Japan for easy city e-bikes. Thailand for Lanna back-roads, New Zealand for the rail trails, Spain for the climbs. Each country rides like nowhere else.
Which kind of ride
How to ride a country you just landed in.
The how matters as much as the where. Three ways to get rolling in a new place, depending on the days you have and how hard you want to work.
All downhill
Start at the crater and freewheel home.
Bali’s best riding barely asks you to pedal. A van carries you up to the rim of the Batur or Kintamani caldera, and from there it is a long descent: coffee plantations, village temples, rice terraces stepped into the green, kids waving from the roadside. You roll into Ubud for lunch having earned the view without the climb.
See the best rides in Indonesia →Japan by bike
A country built for the e-bike.
Japan rides beautifully: smooth tarmac, courteous traffic and riverside paths that thread the cities. Tokyo backstreets to a temple before the crowds, Hiroshima’s peace route along the water, Kyoto’s quiet lanes. Pedal-assist takes the hills, so you keep your eyes up.
See the best rides in Japan →Why two wheels
A bike gets you the back roads.
Fast enough to cover real ground, slow enough to stop for everything worth stopping for. On a bike you take the lane the coach can’t, you smell the rain coming, you hear the village before you see it, and you arrive having actually been somewhere instead of just looking at it through glass.
Browse every cycling tour →Southeast Asia
The flattest, friendliest riding on earth.
From Hoi An’s rice paddies to the Mekong’s back-lanes and the karst valleys around Hanoi, the riding is gentle, the roads are quiet and the welcomes are warm. A local guide keeps the pace easy, finds the lanes the buses miss, and lines up a lunch you would never have found alone.
- 1 Ninh Binh Day Trip: Hoa Lu-Trang An/Tam Coc-Mua Cave-Cycling-Boat
- 2 Cai Be Mekong Delta Tour: Cooking Class, Cycling & Craft Villages
- 3 Mekong Day Trip Explore Village Bicycle CookingClass Group 12 Pax
By effort
How hard do you want to ride?
Some days you want pedal-assist and a flat path. Some days you want a proper full day in the saddle. And some days you want to point the bike at the horizon and ride for a week. Pick the effort, we will point you at the ride.
Easy spin
Roll, don’t race.Flat city e-bikes and gentle riverside paths: pedal-assist does the work while you take in the temples, the backstreets and the morning markets.
A full day
Ride from breakfast to dusk.Village loops and delta back-lanes: thirty-odd flat kilometres, ferries and rice paddies, a lunch stop with the family who cooked it, then the ride home in the cool.
The big one
Make a trip of it.Rail-trail epics and alpine descents: the rides you plan a whole holiday around, point to point over days, the country opening up at handlebar height.
No cars, no climbs
A rail trail is the easiest way to ride far.
Old railways were built to never climb more than a whisper, so the trails that replaced them ride almost flat for days on end: tunnels and timber viaducts, river gorges and tussock plains, a country pub at the end of each stage. No traffic to dodge and no hill to dread, just you, the bike and the long view. New Zealand wrote the playbook.
See all 19 New Zealand rides →By city
Pick a city and roll out.
Ubud for the volcano descent. Hanoi for the day rides out to Ninh Binh. Ho Chi Minh City for the Mekong back-lanes. Tokyo for the backstreets and the river paths. Hoi An for the rice paddies. Chiang Mai for the Lanna countryside.
By country
Every country rides differently.
Delta flats in Vietnam, volcano descents in Indonesia, smooth city paths in Japan, Lanna back-roads in Thailand, car-free rail trails in New Zealand, the long climbs of Spain and Italy. Pick the country, find your kind of road.
Dawn to dusk
A perfect day in the saddle.
First time on a tour and not sure how a day runs? Here is how the good ones flow, from the cool early roll-out to the long freewheel home before dark.
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