India is devoid of two classes, cruisers and dirt bikes. In the name of the cruiser, we only have Harley Davidson motorcycles and Indian motorcycles with an extremely hefty price tag and Japanese cruisers like the Intruder M1800, which are even more expensive. The middle ground is only covered by either Kawasaki Vulcan S or HD Street 750. While the latter is too hot to ride for about 6 months in India, we are only left with one. Anyways this topic is not about that; there is a whole undiscovered class of supermoto and dirt bikes, which we have a big scarcity of in our country. Only now the entry-level slots are being filled by bikes including the Royal Enfield Himalayan and several upcoming motorcycles. There are still 2-wheelers like the DRZ 400, Honda CRF 450L, and KLR 650, which we don’t get in India. So, today we are going to talk about why such a bike should come to our country.
With the coming of sportbikes, we have discovered a lot of undiscovered national and state highways. Yet still, not many of us know about the off-road trails which are stretched like thick veins on the map of our country. Most of our bikes are great on the highways but on off-road, they struggle big time. Besides Royal Enfield Himalayan, there is no bike with a long travel suspension in the entry-level segment in India. The next capable off-road bike is Versys X-300 which costs around Rs 4.5 lakh and before you say anything, BMW G310 GS is not a dirt bike, its more of a touring machine.
We need bikes like mentioned above. A bike like DRZ 400, which has minimalist styling and components incorporating a single cylinder torquey engine, packed inside a strong lightweight chassis, supported by long travel suspensions. If we look around us then all the parts are available to us, we have a Duke 390 engine which has enough torque in it, we have RE Himalayan suspension that is good enough for off-road. We just need a company, interested enough to put this all together.Coming to my original point as to why we need such motorcycles in the first place, then for the answer we just need to look around us. We live in a country, where are a number of off-road trails, which have yet not been discovered. It is because the whole concept of trail riding has not yet caught as much popularity as Normal highway touring. Bringing a couple of awesome dirt bikes with actual off-road performance will fill the people with confidence. They will start by taking a small shortcut to the office via an off-road and in a matter of weeks, they will be wandering off to every dirt trail along the highway to discover something new.
The original expression of owning a motorcycle was to go places and see things which otherwise would have been difficult either with a car or any other means of transportation. Having a supermoto/dirt bike which can travel anywhere, comes really close to that raw freedom of riding, isn't it?
By: Yetnesh Dubey