Gio Pass

National Highway 3 joins the old Bắc Kạn region to Cao Bằng. Đèo Gió is one stretch of it. The stretch runs from Nà Phặc to Vân Tùng. Both are in the Ngân Sơn area. Since the two provinces merged in July 2025, the pass lies in Thái Nguyên province. It is 12 kilometers long, with steep slopes and dangerous bends, and a fair amount of heavy traffic.

Few guidebooks give Đèo Gió a name. Still, it is the kind of roadside stop that stays in the memory longer than many famous ones. It is not a sight with a gate and a ticket counter. It is a stretch of mountain road where people passing through stop on their own. They stop for the view, for air that feels nothing like the plains, and for what the households beside the road sell, which is hard to find anywhere else.

The Đèo Gió neighborhood sits about 800 to 1,000 meters above sea level. It is 2 to 3 degrees cooler than the land around it and is often wrapped in fog. Summers are rainy and cool. In winter the temperature sometimes drops to 1 or 2 degrees Celsius, and the fog grows thick. On some mornings it has been so dense that a person can see only 5 to 10 meters ahead.

That climate gives the fruit trees here their own character. In the area around Ngân Sơn and Nà Phặc there are nearly 30 hectares of peach trees. The peaches called đào tiên grow at Đèo Gió with a flavor of their own, tied to the cold and the mountain mist. Pears grow here too, alongside the peaches.

About 112 households live in the neighborhood, from five ethnic groups. Around 60 of them are Dao Tiền families, strung along about 3 kilometers of Highway 3. The Dao Tiền here still keep life-cycle rites such as weddings, funerals and the ceremony called cấp sắc. Cấp sắc is a coming-of-age ritual of the Dao people. Middle-aged women still wear traditional dress and keep up the craft of embroidery and sewing, handed down from one generation to the next.

Đèo Gió is not a famous spot for photographs. Yet it is one of the places in the northeast where a traveler can stop the car, step out and breathe real cold mountain air. A bag of peaches can be bought from the hands of a Dao Tiền seller, and the eye runs over patches of green forest that spread from the top of the pass down to the valley far below.

The land here is fierce in both seasons. In the rainy season, after long spells of rain, the slopes slide easily. In winter the fog closes in just as tightly. The beauty and the harshness of Đèo Gió exist together and cannot be pulled apart.

Unlike at organized tourist sites, the real life of the highlands goes on in plain view. Dao Tiền sellers set out peaches by the roadside. Women embroider traditional skirts in front of their houses. Smoke from kitchen fires rises from roofs halfway up the mountain.

Standing at the top on a morning when the fog has lifted, a visitor watches the valley slowly appear through a pale white veil, and understands why people so often stay here longer than they planned.