It’s been a while since that last semisuccessful attempt at wordplay in the post title. I say ‘semi’ only because I am a prime-ish example of how humility works etcetera and not because it was halfbaked-slash-unoriginal in a semifulfilling way. Anyway.

In other news, post much trepidation (brand-appropriate), hesitation (just appropriate), and calculation (GST-appropriate), we brought home a Himalayan (the 450 in Kaza Brown) the day before Onam last year.

I was a fan of the 411 from the day it launched and had been drooling over first-second-third-hand market listings ever since. Post turning 36,  watching reviews back to back wasn’t doing anything to calm down the good-old early midlife crisis. I decided to go take a test ride. R was more than fully supportive of the thing and did a stellar job of keeping her concerns from showing.

The bike was heavy and I am not as old as I was when I first rode all the 500s in Gurgaon. I could feel the weight before the first test ride but not during. That supershort ride—through horrible Whitefield-Bengaluru traffic—sold whatever was left to be sold, and got me into the typical longwinded waiting game that is the backbone of an RE-buying experience. 
I took one more longer test ride loop midway through the long wait just to be sure that the first impression wasn’t just wishful thinking etcetera. This time I chose a less trafficky day and the loops-around-town were lovely. The test-ride bike wasn’t in the best of shapes yet the engine-gearbox-suspension trio worked like butter over abrupt slowdowns and huge-ish speedbumps.

I am an equally huge fan of the older Himalayan hillrange wordmark and absolutely hate the abomination that sits atop the new 450’s tank. I asked D for the old vector file so Welpac could help me deal with the daily pain of having to look at the crossbarless capital As messing up that nice offwhite volume. That conversation helped in other ways too; D’s call to the higher ups at RE helped cut my wait time really really short. The ASM was nice enough to call multiple times to make sure the delivery happened sooner and the dealer was a little surprised it did. I kind of embarrassed R with my PDI/PDF shenanigans (thanks to TBHP) but all was well.

RE has managed to build the machine well. I am not used to their bikes having this level of finish or refinement and that is a welcome change. The Himalayan sits happily at 4–5K RPM and makes a lovely drone on revs. (This is new, coming from the low-rev-loving vibey C350.) Almost all the weight sits on top but that makes itself felt only in parking lots and awkwardly slopey traffic stops. (Of which Bengaluru has many fine examples to throw at you.) I managed to drop it once on the way to JCRoad over a pothole-at-a-90-degree-turn as the ground gave way and I had to slop for the turn. I’ve set the stock seat height to its lower setting. With that and the front footpegs folding out of the way when walking the bike through slowmoving traffic, there isn’t as much tiptoeing as I thought there would be. I watch out for potholes and low kerbs now.

Post the first service, went on a ride on the OMR–KGF stretches touching 100 and all was well. Except for all the wind hitting the helmet and all of that getting a little noisy. I’ve since upped the windshield to the touring version but haven’t tried hitting a hundred. I don’t think I am a fast rider anyway. I do look forward to some tricky uphill-downhill geography though. It will be lovely to ride to Wayanad on the twisty estate roads.

I’m keeping it a single-seater till R is fully A-OK with riding pillion. (And generally otherwise.) It is a bit tricky to refuse pillion-ride requests but I’d have it no other way. There are two Rynox Stacker (10L) bags on the tank rails and the straps for a third 30L one on the back seat, permanently. I love front-mounted panniers in general; on the bicycle there are two Ortliebs on the front forks when I am carrying cargo. I think I’ll eventually get the OEM pannier stays and switch the Ortliebs over to the 450, though.

The volumes are clean in a different way (than the 411, which I loved for how unassuming the shapes were). The little details (though not as refined as some of the other everyday machines) are lovely. The Kaza Brown colourway has the nicest stickerwork of the lot (also because there isn’t a lot of it). I’ve grown to prefer as little visible branding on the products-slash-tools I use, even as I admire boldly plastered well-designed logos on everything else, from packaging to stationery to T-shirts. Even the LCD instrument cluster does a good-ish job in presenting the information needed clearly. I think this is one of the most usable—and therefore, best—LCD layouts out there on two-wheelers today. In the analog speedo mode. In the analog speedo mode the layout takes the best parts of actual-analog clusters and complements that with really straightforward typography and colours. I wish they’d picked a monospaced face for numbers though. (It irritates me to no end when the numbers jump around as they update. On the Indie’s instrument cluster, we stick to all monospace mainly thanks to that being segmented LCD but the decision wouldn’t have changed even if it were a TFT. Lots more on that soon.) I’m ordering an AOOCCI or something for GPS soon; the navigation integration via the RE App is a gimmick at best and the lag catches up with you when in unfamiliar parts of the city.

The bike makes me want to ride more, and admire it whenever I am off it. R knows I intentionally forget grocery-list-items so I can go for another short ride. It makes me feel younger and happier on even the commutes through office-going pedestrian traffic. There are days when the Tabebuias are falling onto the windshield and sometimes hanging on to the tank-rail bags. Those days I reach the studio with a smile in my head and happy to take on some new marketing bullshit.

V took this photo in the River parking lot. He has—appropriate for a product designer—a good eye for composition and good taste in vehicles. (Committed to a cafe-racer-ed Husqy even in Bengaluru’s moving parking lots.) We’ll soon go for a ride together I hope.