LOGGING IT OUT
ROYAL ENFIELD HIMALAYAN
Lightens you by: Rs 3.50 lakh
Lives with: Manaal
Odometer reads: 1940 km
Drinking habits: 28.3 kpl
Now that I could walk without any support, the next logical step was to start riding, right? And I did. Not the Himalayan, but a 125cc bike on a tight circuit. And that was an eye-opener. My right leg was shivering from fatigue after just eight laps! Yes, the broken bones in my right leg aren’t healed completely, and I was yet to gain all the muscle strength I had before the accident. As it turned out, a Himalayan was waiting to help me speed up the recovery.
This was the first time I saw the bike, and tried getting it off the stand and moving it around the parking lot. My leg and a half wasn’t prepared for the almost 200 kg of steel and aluminium. The lesson for the next few weeks: move the bike around with the engine on, gain stability and regain muscles in the
legs.
Meanwhile, it was time to exercise my reflexes and sharpen senses. And the best, and quickest way to do that was take the Himalayan for a 300-km ride through the city, highway and even no roads. And boy, did I make the right choice. The comfortable ergonomics of the bike didn’t tire me at all. But the highlight was the engine. Is that really a Royal Enfield engine? I was doing speeds I shouldn’t have been doing on an RE single! And all that heft? It didn’t bother me at all
throughout the ride.
What bothered me was the TFT console. It’s beautiful to look at and easy to read, but a pain to operate. The four-way joystick just won’t take the intended input, and I had to repeatedly try to get to the desired menu. Then there’s the connectivity issue. For some strange reason, the bike just won’t connect with my phone, although Royal Enfield has made the process super easy. Anyways, I have stopped bothering with the console altogether, and am just enjoying the physiotherapy sessions with the Himalayan. By the next issue, I think we would have progressed to getting the bike on the main stand.
