RE Interceptor 650 vs Kawasaki Versys 650

A number of people from the biking community must be wondering what the RE 650 twins will have on offer compared to other 650 twins from well known Japanese brand Kawasaki.

The Kawa's offered are Z650 (Naked, Nagda), Ninja 650 (Faired, Tourer), Versys 650 (All rounder), Vulcan 650(Cruiser????). All bikes from Kawa seem to have more or less the same power characteristics barring the Versys 650 and Vulcan which are retuned for delivering power in the lower RPM range. These ladies deliver around 68ps of peak power, 67 NM of peak torque and are ultra smooth, reliable and powerful. I call them "Japani Gudiya". These cost anywhere between 4.99 ex showroom Pune to 6.XX lacs ex showroom Pune.

Royal Enfield have launched the 650 parallel twins Interceptor and Continental GT. These ladies offer around 47 ps peak power, 52 NM peak torque. The parallel twins have a 270 deg firing order which make them sound like V-Twins. 
The Australians, Americans and Europeans who have reviewed the bike love their simplicity. With the India launch just around the corner, they may be prices somewhere between 2.75 lacs to 3 lacs ex showroom Pune.

The Japs and RE's are both different genres of motorcycles. The twins are like REs first steps towards the mid size segment. They are filling the gap where no one else is present in India. Thought their A.S.S. remains to be seen for more modern motorcycles.

So the debate about which motorcycle to buy carries on. People want to evaluate the Interceptor 650 versus the Kawa Versys 650.

I have a very simple answer for these people. 

Verdict: The Interceptor 650 is like the "aunty" and the Versys 650 is like your "girlfriend". You will be able to do things with the Versys which you may not be able to do with the Interceptor. So go figure who pulls the strings to your heart. The aunty or the girlfriend.

PS: To confuse you further, I can say you will not be disappointed by both. If I had the wad, I would go and buy both.

PS2: If you are moving from an RE to a big hearted JAP, you will need to unlearn and relearn motorcycle riding techniques and a bit of maintenance related to chain lubing, tyres, cleaning etc. 

Go figure!!!

Life's changes

Coming back here after a long long time. Lot of water under the bridge. Life has changed and it has changed me.

I sold off the Fiat Sienna Weekend, the Tata Sierra and bought a Tata Safari. My long standing dream.

Now dealing with many other things which are important! Will keep it posted here.

I still have the lovely old Palio 1.6. Still pulls like crazy. Done close to 80K Kms with her! She is the car.......Love it love It love it!!!

My new old Tata Sierra

The story - I needed a MUV to haul Mangoes across a distance (approx. 400 Kms) and I had a budget of about 2 lakhs for a used one. The options -
1. Ex-Army Mahindra 550XD - Difficult to procure, starts at around 1.5 lakhs and then have to spend 6 months and 2 lakhs to get her to decent performance levels. The up side - you get a full working 4X4 and is a good ego booster. But offers no creature comforts like A/C/PS etc.
2. Bolero - Well did not like the under-powered vehicle and it was a compromise.
3. Tata Safari TCIC - Well decent specimens start at 3 lakhs in the used car market.
4. Tata Sierra - Now thats what I call a good Indian SUV. The production of this wonderful piece of machine stopped somewhere around 2002. She ruled the Indian enthusiasts' hearts for just under a decade and was then replaced by the Tata Safari.

About the Sierra - The Sierra is a 3-door MUV and is powered by a 2 Ltr, IDI Turbo Diesel producing 190NM of torque and a sufficient 90HP. Decent samples are very rare and the ones that you find are abused, rusted and at the end of their life.
The ride quality is phenomenal for all passengers, the driving position is comfortable and is a good highway cruiser. The fuel economy is also good at around 10 KMPL in city and 12 KMPL on the highway for vehicle this size.
Buying the Sierra - As always, logged into the TBHP classifieds and searched for the Sierra. Found really good examples and shot an email to each one of them. Only 1 person from Pune responded and I went and checked out his vehicle. Mumbai registered, but genuinely used in Pune and done around 59K on the ODO. This one was a 95' NA model. Test drove it and the engine still packed a punch.
Spent a good 1 week figuring out the finance and enquiring about spare parts availability.
Closed the deal the following Sunday and brought her home during Ganesh festival.
So I am a proud owner of a Tata Sierra, the car I always wanted to buy but could not buy due to many reasons.

The quest is now ON to rebuild it to its past glory and go even further.

When will Kasab be hanged?

Sigh!!! Its taken the Indian Law enforcement agencies to nail this b.....d more than a year to convict a guy who was caught red handed in the act of waging war against our country. But this is democracy. The human rights people would have called foul if the government hadn't spent Rs. 31 crores (Rs. 310 million) of the tax payer's hard earned money. Shame on us!!!! Shame on us!!!
Now I see the future. Kasab will have to spend his life term (14 years) in some Indian jail and then he will file a petition with the President of India to release him on grounds of good behaviour and humanitarian grounds as well. I say, if he is convicted, hand him to death first and then preserve his dead body for 14 years for his life term!!
But, its a democracy and I have belief that if I am falsely accused, I will be given a fair trial by the Indian government!! This gives me hope as well!!
I feel at times, we should ammend the consitution for such cases as 26/11 and give "kadi se kadi" and "sakht se sakht" saja to the convicted as soon as possible.

Day 1: Malvan - Panya Madhe Killa

Day 1:
This time round, I and Rohit decided to travel to my home town - Malvan. Well, I thought nothing new. How boring. The same road, travelled atleast a 100 times back and forth in the last 5 years. But on a Thunderbird, it sure is a different story. To be honest, I had travelled to Malvan some 10-11 years back with Ananda Kaka and it was really amazing. This time, I was travelling on the Thunderbird.
Tanked up at Khed-Shivapur and started from the Konde-Deshmukh fuel bunk at 7:00 AM sharp. Took our first break at the toll booth after Satara, 15 Kms before Karad (approx.)
Some snaps -

- Again the same old companions parked in the shade.

Moved on towards Kolhapur and stopped right at the Kolhapur entry gate. The time was 10:15 AM. That is cool. I tell you, we covered 230 Kms in 3 hrs 15 minutes flat. Boy, are we good or are we good at covering distances.

Rohit caught up with an acquaintance in Kolhapur and with his directions, we headed to the most famous "Phadtare Misal House" in Udyam Nagar. I had not eaten at this joint in my earlier trips and trust you me, the misal is just awesome. No words to describe it. This eating joint is located in an industrial area and is open from 7 am till 1 PM. At 1 PM, the owner shuts down the eating joint and reopens the same shop as a garage. Thats business strategy redefined for you. :)

After having our stomachs (large ones at that) full, we headed towards the notorious "Gaganbawda Ghat". I was expecting very bad roads due to recent monsoon rains but to my surprise, the roads were in pretty good shape. With the wind in our "helmets", we rode on for 50 odd Kms on winding roads and some "WADAP" traffic and halted 8 Kms from Gaganbawda.

The roads are just awesome towards Gaganbawda. 50 Kms of blissful riding I say.

After this short break, we headed towards the ghat. The ghat was just awesome man. It was misty, the clouds had descended on the hills, there was a chill in the air. Let the pictures do the talking.

Took some snaps and then headed on towards our next halt Kankavli. At the base of the "Gaganbawda ghat", there's a village named "Karul". Hence this ghat is also called "Karul Ghat". There's a police check post there and seeing me on the bike, the policeman promptly signalled me to stop. I thought to myself, damn, u should have got the bike papers along. Now you are screwed big time if he asks for them. The conversation in marathi goes as follows:

(P)olice: Kuthun aalaat?

Me: Punyahun.

P: Kuthe challat?

Me: Malvanla

P: Malvnla kuthe?

Me: Bilwas la.

P: Bilwas? Tikde kon aste?

Me: Me asto.

P(confused): Bilwasche Palav kay tumhi?

Me: Nahi, Bilwasche Vaze.

P(still confused): Bar bar.

Me: Malvanche Dr. Sharad Vaze te majhe kaka

P: Palike samorcha dawakhana?

Me: Correct.

P: Bar bar, aho me pan Malvancha aahe. Aaplya gaavchya lokanna amhi traas det nahi. Jaudya.

Me: Dhanyawaad. Maagun majha mitra yeil, same ashach bike var. Tyala soda.

P: Bara bara.

Me: Hushshshshshshsh!!!!

Ride on!!! Next halt Kankavli. At Kankavli we decide to buy a Royal Stag khamba since civilization is atleast 10 Kms away from my home.

Fortunately or unfortunately there's no liquor store in Kankavli. The only option to buy is from a bar. Hmmmm...Now thats interesting. It is almost 2 PM and the weather has turned sultry since Kankavli is almost at sea level.

We enter the bar to buy the khamba. We pay up and on second thoughts, decide to have a beer instead of the tea. There's only 30 Kms of internal no-traffic roads to travel now.

We have 5 bottles of Fosters' between the 2 of us and are now feeling really good. There's no heat!!! Hick hick!!

Somehow we manage to pick ourselves up and ride on towards our destination.

We finally reach at around 4:45 PM. :)

We wash up, have some nice tea prepared by my father (he had reached there the earlier day). After resting for a while, we decide to visit town for some sight seeing, have our food and come back for the night. We also took dad along since he would get bored all alone.

We go to a place called "DaryaSarang" which according to Rohit is a cool place to hang out. We reach there only to find out that they dont serve beer there anymore. Shucks!!

We then headed out to the omni-present and now renovated "Hotel Hoy-Saayba"!!!

All the 3 of us get drunk on the all time favourite "Royal Stag", then have chicken tikka, pomfret fry and roti for food and head towards a paan shop for banarasi-kiwam-120/300 paan. Sllluuurrrppp...I love it, I love it.

Pan in the mouth, I kick started the bike, engaged the first gear and SNAP!!! The clutch cable had snapped. We tried to fix it but I didn't have a spare and could not do anything. The thought of walking 10 Kms through thick forest in the night at 11 PM crossed my mind more than once. Otherwise, I would have to make 2 trips on Rohit's bike!! That was not too good as well.

Luckily Mr. Vinayak Chavan lives in Malvan and owns a lodge in the town itself. Well, I know what you are thinking. But wait - he also owns a car.

Off we go knocking at Mr. Chavan's gate. He obliges with the car keys, and we reach home in the comfort of the a/c.

We are dead tired after the eventful day and ready to crash.

That my friends wraps up day 1.

On conserving water

I go through this almost everyday. In my office, the office boys fill up our personal water bottles at our desks every morning. Now we have 2 options for filling water one is through a water decanter and the other is filtered and UV purified tap water. Obviously the office boys fill up the filtered tap water which is sourced from an underground borewell and doesn't taste that great. There's this person in office who comes in every morning, pours out the full 1 litre bottle down the drain and fills the water from the decanter. I told that person that he is wasting fresh water which is very precious on mother earth nowadays. But he doesn't give a damn. This thing continues everyday. Now you may ask, what I do for saving water:
1. When Mugdha (my 4 year old daughter) brushes her teeth, I dont let water run through the tap, but instead give her a small glass filled with water.
2. I water my plants using a bucket and mug. No running water through pipes.
3. I try to use minimal water while doing daily chores and ensure that no water is leaking through the taps and the list goes on an on.
Inspite of all this, I still dont know whether what I am doing is enough?
So I feel, I take a lot of effort to conserve fresh water and when I come across people who dont give a damn about water conservation I feel pain.
Right now the world is running after oil reserves, but going forward, the wars will be waged for want of fresh water.
I have seen even the PMC (can u imagine) doing its bit to conserve fresh water. We have rain water harvesting in new schemes. On the tekdi where I go for my daily walk, they have dug huge trenches so that rain water gets filled and they help maintain the water table level.
If you think about it, in the name of development, the people of the world have used up vast non-renewable resources like fresh water, jungles, oil and so on and nobody gives a damn. Poor fellows, I think the next generation is going to curse us for this.
I can foresee people living in a hell known as earth and fighting for their daily meal. If I think about my daughter Mugdha's generation, what will they do? Where will they go?
Well I am not an alarmist but these thoughts tend to cross my mind once too often and not being able to do anything about it is a crime.
God help us all!

A whirlwind tour of South India - Day 7: The last day of the road - trip for me

We had decided that we will wake up as early as we can and be on our way so as to avoid Tirunelvelli morning traffic. We were on our way at 7.00 AM and hence made very good progress. We targeted reaching Bangalore by evening 6.00 PM. Day 7 again just took us on NH-4 all the way to Bangalore. The road is good, traffic is chaotic and one has to be careful of steps formed by various layers of tar/asphalt at points where we change sides. The road is wide and open and initially we covered 120 Kms without taking a break. This actually saw us cover 350 odd Kms by 2.00 PM. We calculated that we had another 200 Kms to go when we came across the first milestone which we could read. (as it was in English and we might have missed some earlier ones. Also since road work is going on, milestones are not in place yet). It read that we had still 300 KMs to Bangalore. I was really pissed off with the map readings that I had. Another 300 Kms was going to take some real pushing on our part.
It started getting dark and there were insects flying all around. Big ones at that. All this while, we had not come across so many insects coming at the bike lights. The funny thing is that when they realize that they are going to crash hard, they come up towards your face to dodge the bike, I had small ones going into my eyes, ears, nose and many splattering on the helmet. At one instant a small insect stuck into my right eye and the eye was on fire. We had to stop for this one. I washed both my eyes with cold water and we continued. Now it was Rohit’s turn. It became really difficult for Rohit since he wears lenses. We stopped again. I can still remember how my eyes felt when that insect got stuck.
Once we had cleaned our eyes again, we continued and to our surprise all insects vanished in some time. Maybe it was because we were coming closer to some city.
We crossed Salem, Hasan encountering all the evening traffic (It was 31st Dec as well) and made slow progress towards Bangalore. We were supposed to stay overnight at one of Rohit’s friends apartment in Bangalore.
We had call him up several times for directions. As we came near, we picked up 2 bottles of champagne and headed to where he lived.
Vishnu is Rohit’s friend when they worked together in their earlier company in Mumbai. Vishnu had apparently shifted to Bangalore and thus had invited us (or rather we had invited ourselves) for the New Year’s party. We listened to all kinds of rock music (I don’t remember as I was in a trance), had some pizza and rum and I was ready to crash.
I wished everybody and went upstairs. The only thing I remember was that it didn’t take me much effort to get into bed. My legs folded involuntarily from under me, knees buckled and I crashed into the bed and slept almost immediately. It was the end of the journey for me. Rohit was planning on staying back in Bangalore to catch up with long lost friends and I wanted to get back as soon as possible because my wife, parents and my 3 year old daughter were waiting impatiently for me to get back. Rohit volunteered to pack my bike off through railway parcel service and I took the next day’s Volvo back to Pune.
Since we covered close to 650 Kms on the last day, its just a blur in the memory for me. We didn't stop at all for taking any snaps. The only thing we had in mind was to rach Bangalore in time for the new year's party.
On my journey to back to Pune, I met another guy from Mumbai (currently working in Bangalore) named Aditya Joshi who himself is an avid biker. We chatted a long time and got to know each other. Apparently he has bought a Yezdi Roadking in Bangalore and restoring it to its full glory. He may have completed his project by now and I am waiting to see his new bike.
After thoughts:
Would I do it again? Hell, yes. No 2 ways about it. But this time, we will plan a bit more and cover the same distance in 12 days instead of the 7 we did it in.
When I and Rohit met each other last week, we contemplated on our next bike trip. It will most probably be to Leh, Ladakh, Kargil. This time, we decided, have more time to spare and look up the country side.
Other thougts that came out while discussing were that we have been real buggers travelling long distances on unknown roads. But thats the thrill isn't it? I loved it. Luckily our bikes were in prime condition and they responded well to our demands. My bike had its first flat tire while I had given it to my mechanic in Pune.
Later Rohit, the useless bugger completed Bangalore to Pune, a distance of close to 881 Kms in a matter of 15 hours on his bike. I didn't believe it first. But he did it. I dont know eher all that energy comes from. Well....he is like that only.
I guess we had our share of good luck and god was watching us all the while. Also the good wishes of friends and family paid off I guess.
Anyways....Thats all folks. That wraps up my 7 day itch (story). Until later!!