Archives for category: Asia

My friend Nathan told me recently about the Royal Enfield Himalayan, a back-to-basics, 411cc adventure bike from India. From reviews I’ve read the bike is more pack mule than race horse. Or said another way, the long-stroke engine provides more useful torque than it does useful horsepower. But often that’s just what’s needed off-road.

I think the YouTube review above does a good job of laying out the bike’s pros and cons. After the jump there’s another video of bike on an adventure in the Himalayas. And here’s a review of the bike in Cycle World to round things out.  Read the rest of this entry »

This is the real deal. Five women, all friends, all French, decide to cross the Himalayas by motorcycle. They arrive in India, get on their Royal Enfields, and then things get tough: crazy traffic, altitude sickness, rockslides, military checkpoints, and fatigue. The people are friendly though and the landscapes are gorgeous. You really have to admire these women’s grit.

The video is in three episodes. Find episodes two and three after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Motocross racer Adam Riemann takes his less-than-experienced father on 4,500 km tour through the Himalayas. They each ride their own 150cc machines.

Fancy doing a 3,500 km (2,175 mi.) lap of India in a 7 hp Bajaj rickshaw? Well then, step right up young sir, young miss, The Adventurists are at it again. Correction. They’re always at it. They’re running three Rickshaw Runs a year, by the looks of it.

The idea is that you raise £500–£1000 ($816–$1632) for charity and pay The Adventurists £1395 ($2277) to sign up. They give you rickshaw, host the start and finish with some epic parties (according to their site), and send you off on a 16-day, shit-your-pants adventure through Indian traffic.

It actually looks like a lot of fun.

Let me start by saying this video is amazing. Now let’s backup. There’s a group called The Adventurists. They host absurd rallies, donate to charities, and throw big parties at the end. One of their events, The Mongol Rally is a 10,000-mile bash from London to Ulan Bator (the capital of Mongolia) in a 1,000-cc (or less) car. What!?

Many people accepted the challenge. A group of Swiss guys calling themselves Team PZM decided to go it one better by piloting their crap Fiat through Iran, Pakistan, and China. Armed guards, ferrying over a seriously flooded highway, amazing views, and friendly people. This looks like an epic adventure.

Want to go next year?

Links:
The Adventurists
Mongol Rally info/sign-up page

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I found this great video on Expo the other day. In 1995 Austin Vince and seven friends went traveling around the world on motorcycles along the longest route possible. They started in their home country of England and covered about 40,000 miles visiting 44 countries. Great stuff.

Octane10.13

Last month, the excellent English car magazine, Octane, covered the 2013 Peking to Paris rally, a grueling 7,610-mile run across the better part of the Eurasian continent. One hundred participants spent about 30 days driving from Beijing, across Mongolia and the Russian steppes, down into eastern Europe, and through the Alps to finish in Paris.

The event is one of many put on by the Endurance Rally Association. According to their site, the route was first run in 1907. As far as we can surmise no one tackled it again for over 100 years until the ERA revived the event in 2010. And they’ve been doing it every year since then. It sounds like an amazing experience.

Here’s a link to a pdf of the Octane article where you can read all about it.

Additional Links:
The official Peking to Paris site
A gallery of images

In 1993 three friends from New Zealand set out from Morocco on what would become an eight-year, eleven-part adventure through Africa, the Middle East, India, China, and Mongolia.

In their travels they saw the whole of human experience: war, corruption, but also great festivals, amazing desert cities, and friendly people of all creeds and colors.

These four videos detail their trip. By all evidence, it was epic. Read the rest of this entry »

GRIS+BOTTOM+BEFORE+AFTER

In case you have a cast-iron pan in your chuck box that you’d like to clean before camping season, or you’ve found a new-to-you, crusty, garage sale find, the blog I Believe I Can Fry has a great post on how to get the most grizzled pan looking new again.

Link:
I Believe I Can Fry: Reconditioning & Re-Seasoning Cast Iron Cookware

This is one of my favorite Camel Trophy videos. It takes place in 1988 on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi. It also shows a bit of the driver training in England. Great footage.

See the rest of the videos after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »