After all, it's still Harley
I think India started to cost me more than I initially calculated.
The tickets were paid for, the expedition was over, the Royal Enfield was handed over, I made the 11-hour bus ride back to Delhi, I enjoyed a clean hotel to the unnatural extent, and I came home convinced that the " Holy Cow " adventure was over.
But it's not over.
Because somewhere in the Himalayas, probably on that day when I did over 100 km of off-roading, something happened that I didn't take seriously enough at the time.
I liked it.
I really liked it.
And, after I returned home, the thought started working.
Actually, the idea was there for a long time.
The truth is, India wasn't the one that gave me the idea of an adventure motorcycle. I'd been flirting with it for a long time.
I still wanted a motorcycle with which I could extend the adventure beyond the asphalt, one with which, when I see a road on the map that is getting thinner and thinner, I no longer have to wonder if it is paved all the way.
I rode my Harley and I ride with great pleasure, but there inevitably comes a time when the asphalt ends and you start to calculate: how much more there is, how bad the road is, if it will break down further and, most importantly, if it's worth it.
I wanted a motorcycle that would make this question disappear.
Is there a road? Let's go. Is there really no road anymore? We'll see.
This desire probably isn't even as new as I thought.
I've been mountain biking for almost 12 years and have participated in dozens, if not hundreds, of competitions. So my relationship with rocks, mud, roots, and choosing the best possible line through a place that a normal person would wonder why they have to go through didn't start in the Himalayas.
It's just that until now I was doing it on two wheels without a motor.
In India I discovered that it is also very fun to ride a motorbike.
Dangerously entertaining, looking back now at what followed.
Before I left, I was nervous about going off-road. I had never done it on a motorcycle before and I wasn't sure how I would deal with the idea of a motorcycle moving under me, losing traction, looking for terrain, and sometimes having to be left to do its thing.
After a few days on the Royal Enfield Himalayan, things started to come together, and that day of over 100 km of off-roading finally solved the problem.
I remembered MTB.
The position, the look ahead, the choice of route, the fact that you don't have to constantly fight what's going on under the wheels. Obviously, a motorcycle over 180 kg is not an MTB and gravity explains the difference pretty quickly if you forget that, but the feeling was surprisingly familiar to me.
When I returned from India, I no longer had the question:
"Would I like an adventure motorcycle?"
I had another problem:
"Good. Which one?"
And this is where the complications began.
The problem is called BMW GS 1300
Over the past year, I had already talked to several friends about their adventure motorcycles.
I don't know how it's done, but almost everyone has a BMW GS.
Serious.
If you hang around bikers long enough and start a conversation about adventure, sooner or later a GS will come up. Usually sooner.
And almost everyone told me the same thing:
“It’s the perfect motorcycle.”
I started reading, watching tests, comparisons, and dozens of videos. And the situation got even more complicated, because even the internet didn't seem very determined to help me find anything seriously wrong with the GS.
Technology galore, electronics, comfort, engine, suspension, balance, touring and off-road capability. For someone like me, who loves technology, the BMW ticks a dangerously large number of boxes.
Maybe even too many.
Because, amidst all the praise, I started to hear an interesting observation. Not from just one person, and not necessarily meant as a criticism.
"She's so good you just have to trust her."
Some have described to me the feeling that the bike filters what's going on beneath you so well that you don't feel the road in the same way anymore. Others have said that other bikes, KTM being a frequent example, may be less "perfect" but have more character and can be more fun.
And here they lost me.
Or, more precisely, this is where they got me thinking.
But I want a perfect motorcycle?
Normally, my answer should be simple:
Yes.
I like technology. I like well-thought-out things. I like systems that work, gadgets, electronics, and smart technical solutions. From that point of view, the GS and I should have gotten along very well.
But there's also the other side of me.
The part that has been riding Harley for years.
And that doesn't necessarily seek perfection.
I want to feel the road. I want to feel like I'm doing something there, not just the bike doing everything for me. I want feedback, I want character, and I want to get off it feeling like we had fun together.
I know that "fun" is an extremely vague word when you're talking about a motorcycle.
What does it actually mean?
Faster? No.
More efficient? Not necessarily.
Better? Not that much.
I think it simply means you feel like giving it another go.
I knew the feeling very well when I was riding a mountain bike. You finish a descent, you're tired, maybe your hands hurt, and your first thought is to go up one more time to go down again.
That's what I was looking for.
But there was one problem. They're ugly.
Here I'll probably lose half of the adventure owners who survived until this paragraph.
But that's it.
I find adventure motorcycles ugly.
Almost all.
I know, design is completely subjective. What I like may seem awful to you and vice versa, and I'm not trying to establish any universal truth about motorcycle beauty here.
But for me, design matters.
A lot.
I want to look at the motorcycle after I park it.
And among the adventure motorcycles, there was only one that I was looking at and thinking:
Yeah, I could see that in the garage.
Harley-Davidson Pan America.
Don't get me wrong. The Pan America is not, in my eyes, as beautiful as a classic Harley. Not even close.
But among the adventures?
For me, it is the most beautiful.
And here reason began to have a serious problem.
GS or Pan America?
For a while I constantly oscillated between them.
The BMW GS was the logical choice. A mature, refined motorcycle, full of technology and with a reputation built over many years.
But Pan America came up with something else.
It was coming with something that was familiar to me.
Not because it resembles classic Harleys - it doesn't - but because, beyond the adventure form, for me it remained a Harley.
And I've been in love with Harley-Davidson for as long as I can remember.
So I kept asking friends, reading, watching videos, and listening to all the arguments.
And I really want to thank my friends who were patient enough to explain to me why their GS is awesome, what it does well, what it does less well, what they like, and what they would change.
All the information was extremely valuable.
They helped me a lot to buy my Pan America. :)
This probably wasn't the result everyone was looking for, but I thank them anyway.
And yesterday it came
I received my motorcycle yesterday.
Harley-Davidson Pan America Limited.
And I'm very excited.
For now, I'm not going to tell you how amazing it is, how well it works, or that I made the perfect choice, for the simple reason that I don't know yet.
I just received it.
We're going to get to know each other.
And if I've learned anything from India, it's that the first impression of a motorcycle can change quite a bit once the asphalt disappears.
Thanks also to the Harley-Davidson Bucharest team for all the support and for making the process so simple and fast.
Now comes the important part.
To get it dirty.
Because it would be pretty embarrassing to buy an adventure motorcycle after I returned from the Himalayas and only keep it on asphalt.
Looking back, the choice now seems much simpler than it did during the months when I kept turning the issue upside down.
The GS would probably have satisfied my love of technology and engineering perfection much better.
There are probably lighter motorcycles for off-road.
There are probably some that are faster, some that are simpler, and some that I would be less sorry to drop on the rocks.
But we don't always buy motorcycles with Excel.
At least I can't.
There has to be something that makes me turn around and look at it after I park it. Something that isn't perfect, maybe, but that makes me feel like I want to go somewhere with it.
India showed me that I want to continue even when the asphalt runs out.
MTB had shown me a long time ago that I like to play through rocks and mud.
And the Harley-ist in me had probably made the decision before the rational part had finished all the comparisons.
So, in the end, the rebel in me didn't really have any choice but to buy anything else.
It had to be a motorcycle with a Harley soul.
Now we just have to see where it takes us.
And, this time, if the asphalt runs out...
all the better.
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