For friends, we have little in common. One restores motorcycles for a living, the other reimagines them. I feature way off this axis, instead having committed to telling stories about motorcycles, including ones they build. We don’t ride together often and our expectations from our motorcycles are wildly different from each others’. Somehow, though, we all happened to buy the same motorcycle, at the same time. A happy coincidence? No, it can’t be just that.
It took neither a pact nor peer pressure to arrive at this point of convergence. I’d simply attribute it to the KTM 390 Enduro R. It’s a motorcycle that has enough to offer to each of us on our loosely defined trajectories, each substantially distinct from the other. Riding together isn’t something we’d dreamt of — oh, how I hate to be the slowest guy in the group — and we sure haven’t made towering promises to each other to do so in the future. We’re just three guys who love riding motorcycles, who happen to have found love in what the Enduro promises and delivers.
Shail Sheth and Yogi Chhabria need no introduction in these pages. We’ve featured so many of their exotics and custom one-offs over the years, it’s easy to forget they don’t work here! For those of you who aren’t familiar with this space (aren’t you glad you found this mag?) Shail owns Bombay Custom Works, a motorcycle customisation outfit that goes far beyond just that. Yogi, meanwhile, runs YC Design, a motorcycle restoration and maintenance workshop — that is, when he isn’t hunting down medals and being a two-wheeled terror. They also happen to be at extreme ends of the off-road riding spectrum, with Shail’s trail riding pursuits having only just begun with the arrival of his Enduro, while Yogi is a seasoned off-road guy whose appetite for dirt appears unending. An honest assessment of my own standing here would be to say I derive tremendous happiness from riding in the dirt even if I lack the finesse and most of the bravado it demands.
Now that I’ve conned them into waking up at an unearthly hour for this shoot, I’ve to play the good host, so I toss questions at them. ‘Is owning the Enduro a matter of pride for you?’ Instant dismissal. ‘Should a motorcyclist have anything to be proud about?’ Not really. ‘That’s for those who take themselves too seriously.’ A motorcycle triggers the opposite. In almost all cases, a motorcycle is a portal to your innocence, one that induces thrill and fulfilment.
It’s this flavour that drew us to the Enduro in the first place. Between us and what we do for a living exists access to a most enviable spectrum of motorcycles and, yet, the potential and possibilities an Enduro presents appealed strongly enough to warrant owning one. It’s a road-legal hooligan of a motorcycle that makes a monumentally delicious deal of even just running errands while doing enough to paint each of our contrasting off-road ambitions. It’s this versatility, especially when you consider how far apart we are as off-road riders, that makes the Enduro tremendously fulfilling. Yogi, for instance, rides far more serious machinery every weekend and yet gets exactly why a motorcycle of its kind matters. The Enduro, to us, is as much a need as it is a want.
If you happened to be hiding in the bushes (?) along the trail I’d picked for our party of three, you’d struggle to spot our off-road riding disparity. Having been in situations like this before, though, I figured it took an effort on each of our parts. For Shail, it was about keeping up while challenging his instincts of self-preservation; for Yogi, it was restraint. It was crucial for me to meet them at the halfway point, to come up with a balancing act between the extremes of boredom and intimidation. When you care enough, this comes naturally. And it doesn’t just apply to friends. Riding a motorcycle makes you considerate because you understand, in a very physical sense, the cycle of vulnerabilities and sensory indulgences you become a part of. And you’re almost always swinging towards either end, instinctively. For once, remaining centered is the least attractive option. Zen principles can go take a hike.
Sensing a little too much comfort in our unscripted huddle against an outstanding view of the mountainside, a little challenge was in order. I knew of a small but tricky water crossing just a little further up the trail, made difficult not so much by the force of the stream but by how stupidly slippery the surface of its rock bed was. Warm and fuzzy doesn’t last very long with us and, at the very core, we’re a bunch of 17-year-olds who just want to have a laugh — even if at each others’ expense. My plan worked. What had so far been a congregation of mutual admiration soon turned into a survival contest. Yogi paddled through with some difficulty, I walked the bike across gingerly and Shail simply had us do it for him. It was hilariously fun and, once on the other side of the stream, we confessed we’d never attempt such a thing solo. The underlying comfort of having friends around matters so greatly when riding off the road.
The conversation thereafter moved on from a state of reflection and philosophy to expletive-laden banter. Underneath our dreams and off-road fantasies, we’re only a bunch of happy motorcyclists trying to have fun. It’s a simple, linear state of being. Shouldn’t we be proud of that? I still don’t think so and neither do they. For as long as we’ve existed, riding motorcycles has been a fundamental way of life and we simply don’t know another way. To be proud, therefore, we’d have to know a reality different to ours which, fortunately, none of us have ever been compelled to discover. Or intend to, either.
If that sounds militaristic, I assure you it isn’t. We all do what we have to for a living and it isn’t a life exempt from accountability. Of course we have pursuits other than motorcycling — as anyone should — and, when immersed, we’re inseparable from our individual purposes. Motorcycling, to us, is simply existential. A binding theme that runs across the length of our undefined lifetimes. I think we’d all like to keep it that way, too, although Yogi does get me worried at times, with the kind of riding exuberance he showcases.
Over the next little while, we’ll find ourselves taking different riding lines to more or less the same destination. Sometimes, together and more often, on our own. Each time, we’ll learn and get better, and have more stories to exchange at the end of it. We’ll reminisce and brag in the same breath, and egg each other on to try ridiculous things. For as long as we continue to survive all of it, it’ll always be a matter of who laughs loudest. That, we can sure be proud of.
