Himalayan Odyssey '09 - Why Royal Enfields rock the route to Ladakh

Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm not really a 'Bulleteer'. While I think Royal Enfield makes some really great bikes, I've never considered owning one, even though most non-bikers tend to think I look like someone who rides an Enfield. I was secretly hoping that the guys at RE would let me have one of their newer Machismo 500 LBs for the journey. But they sought fit to hand the media the twinspark Thunderbirds. Having been sport riding in the twisties around Pune for the last few years, the thought of having to ride a 'cruiser' motorcycle over mostly broken roads and gravel track naturally made me feel a little uncomfortable. But I wasn't going to let that stand between me and what I knew from the beginning would be one of the most exciting journeys of my life.

So as we flagged off from Delhi on the 13th of June towards Chandigarh, I figured that the straight highways would be the ideal place to get accustomed to the T-Bird - a bike which I hadn't ridden more than a couple of kilometers on before. And right off the bat, it became very clear that the bike wasn't really a cruiser, but more of a laid-back street bike. The foot pegs were almost as far back as most of RE's street bikes, and though the seating position was lower, the T-Bird displayed a nimbleness very similar to the Machismos and other Bullets. But the real test of the 'Bird came the next day, as we tackled the couple of hundred kilometers of twisty roads on the way to Manali - the kind of riding I was very familiar with and very critical about.

While obviously the T-Bird didn't have the excitement of a sports bike on the winding Manali roads, it did tackle corners with a certain kind of grace that made me smile a lot. Apart from the footpegs that kept scraping (mostly due to my excessive weight) the 'Bird had no trouble keeping up with (and even passing) the faster bikes. In fact, I was having so much fun on the bike that I even decided to christen her 'Fatgo'... for reasons that shall remain personal as of now.

Now the latter stages of this trip involved riding on nearly every kind of surface imaginable - from smooth tarmac, broken tarmac, gravel, desert sand, mud, small stones, big stones and even through water. And while she wasn't the best-suited bike for this type of riding, the 'Bird didn't put a wheel wrong in the entire journey, even though she was running on bone-stock tyres. In fact, the only things that did go wrong with the bike were a cracked footpeg frame (thanks to the excessive scraping and all the rocks on the road) and a couple of punctures convincing me that this whole myth about the low reliability of Royal Enfield bikes is just that... a myth. Maybe I was lucky that I didn't suffer any breakdowns. But whatever breakdowns my fellow riders riding a variety of different Royal Enfield bikes did suffer were all rather minor and they were back on the road in no time. Throughout the journey, I was hard pressed to think of another sort of bike that would be able to pull so much load so easily through this kind of abrasive terrain and altitude. I honestly do not believe that any other bike could take so much abuse from the bumpy roads with the utmost of ease and complete this journey in one piece.

But by far, the thing that impressed me the most was the fuel efficiency that the Thunderbird Twinspark delivered throughout the ride. On the straight highways, it was around 40 kmpl (this would have been a little better if I wasn't so throttle-happy), while throughout the remainder of the journey, the efficiency stayed in the region of 32-35 kmpl. A good feat considering the high altitude, the arduous terrain, my heavy weight and the fact that my throttle-happiness was unchanged even on the loose stuff. In fact, I believe that the Twinspark could have easily completed the journey from Tandi to Leh (there are no petrol pumps in this stretch of 385km) without the need to carry additional fuel.

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I now stand at the end of the journey with a lot of my beliefs changed forever. I'm still not entirely convinced that I want an Enfield for myself, but my love and respect for these 'thumpers' has grown a million-fold. So to all those Enfield riders around the country, I whole heartedly wish them 'Happy Thumping'.