Co Ma Pass

The road from Thuận Châu to Co Mạ climbs over steep stretches of pass and winds through an unbroken run of hairpin bends. The drive takes more than two hours, not because the distance is long but because the road is a mountain road.

When the car reaches more than 1,500 meters, the air turns cold. Co Mạ is a highland commune in Sơn La Province. The center of Thuận Châu is 43 kilometers away. The place stays cool all year, and that is the first thing a traveler feels on stepping out of the car.

What draws people to Co Mạ most is the cloud. On sunny mornings, especially after a day of rain, cloud often spills down into the valley below. Villages appear and vanish in it like floating islands. From above, a person looking out across the white layer sees a far range of mountains and, deep in the distance, the Mã River region. This is what people call standing above a sea of clouds.

Co Mạ is home to the Hmong. Each year around National Day, on September 2, a Hmong market is held here and brings people down from villages far up the mountains. On the steep slopes around Co Mạ, sơn tra, longan, mango, passion fruit and pineapple are slowly replacing the old way of farming.

The land around Co Mạ is rugged, and travel here is hard. For that very reason, the landscape and the rhythm of life have been disturbed less than in many highland places close to a main road.

Co Mạ has no signposts and no gate. It is highland country where mountain nature and daily life appear just as they are. On a morning when the cloud has not yet lifted, the valley below the pass lies white. Seeing it, one can understand why people call Co Mạ the gate to the sky.