Rajasthan The Ride

My friend Arvind is a frustrating sort of fel&shylow. A photographer of quality, he is also tardy. And it is not impossible for him to arrive at a 6am shoot at six in the evening. He is, in other words, like all great artists, often unable to recon&shycile the world inside his head with the one outside.

But what Arvind can do, and he has a near-magical ability to do this, is make the people around him have a good, no, a great time. Arvind has in the past also been a tour leader and by the time he has finished with one of those, he will have conquered hearts and minds.

What does any of this have to with a bunch of ex-Enfield men who have bought themselves fancy bikes&mdashDucati Scrambler Icons, Triumph Bonneville T100s, and Harley Davidson Iron 883s&mdash and are looking to take largely Western tourists on &ldquoluxury motorcycles rides&rdquo around the country

Well, everything&hellip but first the facts the newly-formed company Motoziel (ziel means destination in German) will in the middle of March (details are up on their website) take eight riders willing to cough up $4,100 each (about Rs 2,80,000) on a two-week tour of Rajasthan. Other tours will follow.

Should you go, you will be given a motorcycle of your choosing (out of the three mentioned above), be expected to ride an average of 200km a day, and be bedded down each evening in luxury.

Motoziel were kind enough to invite Outlook Traveller on their maiden test run&mdashThe Rajput Trail. (The name pays homage to the &ldquobrave warriors who built the state&rdquo but it could jar in the minds of people with more evolved political sensibilities.) In keeping with Motoziel&rsquos philosophy of smaller groups get better care, we were a small crew&mdashfive Ducati Scramblers followed by a support car.

Never mind the exhausting detail of who was who, let me just say that there was us, and then there was the English&shyman&mdashKevin J. Lear, 57, former British Army man, who now runs the website Motorbike Adventures of Britain and a digital magazine called Motorbike Rider &mdashwho also turned out to be the star of our roadshow. He was so honest about his life, its ups and many downs, and still willing to put on a smile every morning. There was a lot that I could learn from him. As could Motoziel, but we&rsquoll get to that too.

The Scrambler is a delightful ma&shychine. Eight hundred cc, six-speed, and with the power of 43 horses, it will shoot out so fast in first gear that if you&rsquore not hanging on, you&rsquore liable to lose hold of your handlebars. Things calm down in third gear but only for a second or so for you look down at your dial and see you&rsquore doing 151 kilome&shytres per hour. &ldquoA hundred and fifty one kilometres per hour That is the fastest I have ever been&rdquo

I will gush some more. In Jodhpur we stayed at Raas, a boutique hotel at the foot of Mehrangarh Fort that has made use of the enchanting trick of fusing old with new. The hotel is made up of three modern buildings and four old, with the oldest (the original haveli) having been built towards the end of the 18th century. The pillared and now glass-walled struc&shyture that houses the reception area was dismantled before modern construction began, moved, and then reassembled where it stands today

.

Outside of Udaipur, we spent two nights at serene Devigarh. An 18th-century palace, Devigarh employs an approach similar to Raas (the two are sister concerns) with the outsides hav&shying been left untouched and the insides thoroughly modernised and coated in Mediterranean white.

The posh stopovers and the motorcy&shycles are important for they are Motoziel&rsquos USP. They allow the company to differ&shyentiate itself from the plethora of touring outfits that have already mushroomed in the country. Too many people today armed with an Enfield and wearied of corporate life are conducting similar tours. But according to Motoziel&rsquos CEO, Biswaroop Banerjee, who used to look after accessories for Royal Enfield before this, his is the only company in the coun&shytry to offer &ldquobig bike&rdquo tours.

That and their luxury quotient are what allow them to charge as much as they are doing. In comparison, for their Himalayan Odyssey last year&mdashDelhi to Leh via the Spiti Valley and back over two weeks&mdashRoyal Enfield charged their patrons, who brought their own bikes, 40,000 each.

The Odyssey, true to its name, was eventful. When I did it in 2012, I fell off my motorcycle twice and broke a toe. Despite the damage, I am grateful for the experience, for it taught me most of what I know about motorcycling.

But, and this was the upsetting part, our lead rider back then was of very little help. With little understanding of the term leadership, he filled my head with dark and ugly thoughts. And so finally I refused to ride behind him, for that is not the condition you want your head to be in when you&rsquore astride a motorcycle. 

Which is why I was telling you about Arvind. So much is dependent on the tour leader you find yourself yoked to. And when he is escorting foreigners, as Motoziel would like to, he isn&rsquot there just to get you from point A to B&mdashhe is an ambassador of his country. He also has to tell you about the places in between and their history. How did I come to that con&shyclusion Well, obviously I went to my go-to man Kevin, partook of his pot of tea, and asked for an assessment of The Rajput Trail.

&ldquoWhat have I learnt about this country on this trip&rdquo asked Kevin. &ldquoThe only time I got to learn something about this country was when my stom&shyach was upset and I was riding in the support car.&rdquo Digvijay Singh Bhati, lo&shycal gentleman, raconteur, and back-up rider on this trip had been his co-pas&shysenger while he was unwell. Affable, Digvijay had kept Kevin entertained.
&ldquoPeople will come to do what they cannot back home,&rdquo added Kevin, and then proceeded to say that big bikes, luxury hotels, better roads than in India, and people who follow the rules of the road, can all be found back home in the West. Here instead are the things that excited Kevin. &ldquoThe roadside caf&eacutes that we stopped at ev&shyery day for lunch.&rdquo By which he meant the dhabas.

After leaving Devigarh we had rid&shyden to Nimaj, staying the night at the Nimaj Palace, a large haveli that has been turned into a family-run hotel. Spoiled by Devigarh, I had thought it did not compare and when Biswa&shyroop asked me whether it qualified as luxury, I politely said no.

As for the village walk through Nimaj that evening, I didn&rsquot think twice about turning it down. I&rsquove seen more than enough villages, I said to myself. What could I possibly see that is new here

Obviously that was not the case with Kevin and I think it took him some time to wrap his head around the idea that nine hundred people sourced their water from one tube well. As for the potter who fashioned pots on his wheel by the light of an iPhone, Kevin thought that made &ldquoall of us in the West look like idiots&rdquo. Even his take on Nimaj Palace was different from mine. &ldquoYou could tell you were in somebody&rsquos home. The chicken had flavour. I wouldn&rsquot have seen something like that if I were on my own.&rdquo

It was another Englishman who said the East and the West never shall meet and whatever we might think of him today&mdashKipling is also respon&shysible for that awful coinage, &lsquothe white man&rsquos burden&rsquo&mdashsitting with Kevin in his room on the outskirts of Jaipur, for one small, disturbing minute I thought I understood where those words might have sprung from.

You see I had been so busy luxuriat&shying at the spa at Devigarh and whip&shyping my motorcycle into going faster, that I had completely overlooked the fact that the foreign tourist might be looking for very different things from this trip.

A fancy bike and a posh hotel might do the trick for somebody with an un&shyderstanding of India, but will they be good enough for the foreign traveller

And that, of course, is the challenge before Motoziel. They have bought their big bikes, they should have little trouble booking nice hotels, all they have to worry about now is what they are going to teach their customers about this vast country. And that might be the interesting part.

TOURS AND COSTS The Gurgaon-based Motoziel aims to provide what it calls &lsquo360-degree motorcycling solutions&rsquo. Broken down, that means they&rsquore offering luxury and adventure tours to some of India&rsquos motorcycling hotspots&mdash Rajasthan and Leh being their first two longer rides&mdashand also to Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet.

THE RAJPUT TRAIL The Rajput Trail will take place between March 13 and 26. The motorcycles on offer are the Ducati, the Harley, and the Triumph. Tour cost $4,100.

OTHER RIDES Get Leh&rsquod will take place between July 20 and August 2, with customers allowed a choice between the Ducati Icon for $4,899 and the Enfield Classic for a thousand dollars less.

Excursions to Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet will take place in April, May, and June, respectively. The ride to Lo Manthang, Nepal is the toughest Motoziel offers and expects riders to be &lsquohighly experienced&rsquo. Motorcycle choices will include the Honda CRF 250L ($4,300) and the Enfield Classic ($3,400). Bhutan will cost you $4,499 on the Ducati and $3,099 on the Enfield Classic. And Tibet will cost you $4,999, with the only motorcycle on offer being the Enfield.

CUSTOM TOURS Custom tours can also be arranged. Call Motoziel on 9810968277 or email them at info@motoziel.com. Their website is motoziel.com. The company is also in the process of setting up a store in Gurgaon, where they will stock motorcycle clothing and accessories. And, finally, their Ducatis, Harleys, and Triumphs can also be rented out for Rs 5,500 a day.