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"You need legs made of iron," my friend the bike buff warns. "Otherwise the high road will bring you to your knees. Umphang isn't made for an easy Sunday morning ride."

In fact I do all right cycling. My previous record was more than 700 kilometres in a week, from central Laos to Angkor Wat in 2004.

But I swore on a warm Lao beer that I'd never get back on a mountain bike.

And yet here I am, lured by the promise of scenic roads and good buddies, trying to readjust the saddle support to match the length of my legs.

The trip has been organised by the Tourism Authority of Thailand, in a bid to show Umphang's poten¬tial for mountain biking. The focus is on a sleepy, isolated valley already famous for the Tee Lor Su Waterfall and rafting on the Mae Klong River.

Hundreds of thousands of adventurers brave the lofty lanes each year for a roll in the rapids. Mountain biking would be a perfect addition, making Umphang the complete adventure playground.

My companions are an interesting mix.

Jack, a bigtime traveller and smalltime writer, doesn't own any kind of bike. He has no idea how to change gears.

Then there's "the General", a retired highranking Navy official who knows the water well but not the mountain. He's arrived with his folding bike, though, and he wants to master the road.

There are firstrate bikers too, like Lek, a tough woman who led my twowheeled tour across Laos and Cambodia and works with CyclingThailand.com.

But, strictly speaking, we're a band of casual cyclists - those of us with bikes haul them out of storage maybe once a year.

Umphang's rafting fame does cyclists a disservice. Cuddled in the valley, the district is split by the main, paved, northsouth road. Rustic but wellmaintained pathways link the villages across a gently rolling hillside. The surrounding tranquil farmland turns golden with ripened rice each winter.

We set off on a cold morning to raft down the Mae Klong. Nice and easy, we cruise between banks lined with the curtains of bamboo and teak and sheer rock walls.

We pass small cascades, beehives and wildflowers. What we don't pass is any current that's even remotely wild.

"This route is more breathtaking than thrilling," one of the locals says.

We stop for lunch at Tee Lor Su, one of Asia's greatest waterfalls, and then, after three hours on the river, we swap the boat for the mountain bikes.

"It's a paved road with great views," Lek promises, mentioning nothing about a long, gruelling uphill struggle.

The grade turns upward sooner rather than later. I get to work at the pedals of my sixspeed.

"How are you doing down there, General?" I call back to the old soldier, who seems to be dragging his bike up the slope.

"I've been pulling this bike for an hour and there's no sign of any downhill," he gasps back. "You want a cheap folding bike?"

There's little traffic on the road. Once in a long while you glimpse an entire Hmong family rocket by on a motorcycle. They flash those "youaresuchafool" smiles and wave a quick goodbye.

Umphang is home to several small ethnic clans, refugees from the fighting in Burma. You see them everywhere.

The Karen are the nature lovers, so they'll be riding an elephant or trekking a trail. The Hmong, known for their business sense, run the small shops in the villages.

After a full day of gears and sprockets and muscles and tendons, we pitch our tents in the Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary, a Unesco World Heritage Site.

One of the perks of cycling is that you can eat copious amounts of food without worrying that it will show up on the scales. Chicken curry, fried eggs and chilly paste are soon on the table, and everyone eats more than their fair share.

The night temperature drops to 14 degrees. We gather around the campfire and talk about the hill and its abusiveness.

Park ranger Sompong Thongsikhem pops by to warn us there's a stray bull elephant that often barges in on campers, looking for a latenight snack.

"You shouldn't go walking around alone," he says.

We're all so tired, though, that if the elephant comes across us he'll bolt in the opposite direction. We'll be snoring so loud, dreaming of that great downhill trip, that he'll think we're a whole pile of tigers.