Ride for Habitat! – Two Wheeled Expeditions gives back.

The one thing most of us take for granted is a decent place to rest at the end of each day. The times we may have found ourselves without a roof could be by choice or sheer foolishness. Like spending a night beside a freezing lake high in the Himalayas without a tent. Or riding through torrential rain and not finding a place to sleep till late into the night. We may call it adventure and once we’re back home with a roof over our heads and a warm bed under our weary bones, we can laugh about it.

But when we pause to consider the people we ride past who often have no choice but to sleep out in the open or in poorly constructed slums we dare not call it their “adventure”.

With this realization we decided to do our part to give back to the country that provides the incredible backdrop for many of our rides. So a few months ago, Two Wheeled Expeditions founder Roro La Velle and I began searching for a suitable charitable organization to partner with in the area of home construction for the needy in India. This led us to Habitat For Humanity India, an NGO that has been doing just that for nearly four decades. And this year, they even won the prestigious ‘Mahatma Award for Social Good’ in India for their noble efforts.

It also made sense to collaborate with the local motorcycling community including the decade old “Delhi Bikers Breakfast Run” (DBBR) and our friends and local motorcycle leather artisans at TripMachine to champion this cause and ensure that more people got involved. DBBR had already volunteered for few building projects in the past with Habitat and it was time to renew that commitment.

 

Thus ‘Ride For Habitat 2019’ got kick-started on 12th October as a long line of motorcycles rode nearly 70kms out of Delhi. School kids waved out of their buses while those in cars had their phones out to video us. Closer to our destination, the village kids ran out of their huts, laughing and waving at this peculiar sight.

 

Check out the quick vid from the ride!  Video from our Ride for Habitat fundraiser.

 

Once we reached the Aravali Orchard, our destination for the morning’s post ride activities, helmets off and chai tea in hand, we sat around the manicured garden to hear about the significance of this ride and its implications into the future.

While Two Wheeled Expeditions donates $50 for every booking to Habitat, the company also invites international riders to volunteer for building projects. Such on site experiences often enrich and help shape our ideas about what really matters at the end of the day. And while adventure motorcycling is still a privilege, it can also be an opportunity to give back to those in need.

Pramil Aruldoss from Habitat shared passionately about why they do what they do. He said, “for families that end up receiving their home from Habitat For Humanity…when they have a place of belonging, a place to go back to sleep at the end of each day…they are then able to focus on other things like education, health, livelihood, hygiene and sanitation…the long term impact on such families is incredible”

 

The vision of Habitat For Humanity to ensure “a world where everyone has a decent place to live” profound. And it requires unique partnerships and initiatives such as ‘Ride For Habitat’ to pursue it. The invitation is open to all of us from across borders and from all backgrounds. Maybe for some of us, it may just take a night out on a cold mountain without a tent or getting stranded in the rain to make us realize what a difference a house makes to our wellbeing.

I will divulge my bias from the get go. I am not, nor have I ever been, a fan of Japanese motorcycles. Ok, I said it. Let loose the torrent of blaters (blogging haters), trolls and aficionados. I don’t care. Maybe it’s my semi-European upbringing or the perhaps unjustified ‘soul’ of European bikes but the last Japanese bike I owned was a Yamaha YZF600 in LA back in 1997. When it was stolen in 1998, a Triumph Daytona filled its place and that was that. So glad we got that behind us.

My primary baseline for comparison are the 1050 and 1200 GS’s I’ve been riding as my daily rides/adventure steeds for the last 15 years. Both are big & reliable (the latter got me around the world) but nimble is not a word that would find its way into the GS lexicon. I’ve seen lots of videos of two wheeled titans thrashing the monster 1250 GS Adventure through swamps and over dunes. Nice little marketing snippets, perhaps, but for all of us who have not competed in Paris – Dakar, I call bullshit. I got my Husky motorcrosser stuck in a mud bog in the middle of the California wilderness once and it took me an hour and several heart attacks to set it free. If I was on my GS (weighing more than double the Husky), I would have been, how do you say?…Oh yes, fucked.

To the Honda!

Let’s start where we all do, looks. If it were a Tinder girl, you’d swipe right. If it were a Hinge guy, you’d definitely give it a like. And if you were on Match, a wink would be in order. (yes, I’m single and available). Even if I had never hit the start button, I would have been satisfied just to have the image of her in my mind’s eye forever and ever. The dripping lusciousness of the blue/red/white sparking paint scheme, the sparkle of the gold-finished spoke wheels, the clean lines of the water-cooled parallel twin engine, the freshly bronzed crankcase, the sharp edges of the body work. Get excited. It is truly the most beautiful dualsport I have even laid my lovely blue irises upon. (god, I hope some women are reading this article.)

Now with every action there must be an equal and opposing reaction so here’s my ding and believe me, it’s me, not you. It’s bloody tall! Yes, I am short – maybe 5’7” after an hour on an inverter – but I have always had a thing for the tall ones. My Triumph Tiger, my two GS’s and my KTM 450 EXC all had towering seat heights but I got used to them. If you suffer vertigo, you may want to rethink. Or lower the suspension. Or opt for the lower seat. Or wear stilettos, if that’s your thing. The only time I found it…troubling, was trying to back it up with two tiptoes on the ground, ballerina style. Not a great look but it worked.

Hit the starter and holy crap, what a snarl! And that’s with the stock can. The juices now flowing, the big iPad on the handlebar lights up. Apparently the computer does a lot of things. I ignore it and set off for the Surrey Hills south of London. After 60 seconds I am obsessed. The bike is so tall but as lithe as a supermodel and feels as light as a feather. The narrow geometry gives immediate confidence and just screams ‘take me to the dirt!’ Sat on the new GS Adventure recently? Where the Africa Twin is like being on the back of a young camel (I have), the GSA is like sitting on a male rhino (I have not). Ever try picking a rhino up out of a mud bog? Didn’t think so.

The engine is grunt galore and the snorting exhaust note completely dominates the whirly whine coming out of the engine case. Torque comes by the bucket full and power-wheelies and a mere quarter twist of Mr. Righty away. There were no trails offering their dirt and mud to us so I made due with an urban motocross track. Tearing down narrow residential roads (not advised) mowing over speed bumps did not unsettle the suspension one little bit although, being only 167 lbs/76kg, I maybe should have dialed down rear shock rebound a bit to offset that bucking bronco effect. Likewise jumping over and off curbs presented no gripes at all. It may weigh twice as much but it handles a lot like my KTM 450 with suspension travel to match. Obviously, my spate of hooliganism does not vet the bike’s off-road credentials but I can vouch for its unparalleled ability to raise hell in any city of your choosing.

I spent 6 hours on my sexy gazelle crisscrossing the urban / suburban environment of South London and, with the exception of the seat height and the utterly crap hand guards (I mean like plastic plates from an office picnic crap), this bike is totally hype-worthy. Will I buy one? Probably not. My next purchase is already in the chamber…the KTM 790 Adventure. Euro bias? Maybe. But mainly because of the type of riding I tend to do, Two Wheeled Expeditions style. But I am a profoundly and irrevocably changed human. This Honda, this sexy beast of a bike is without peer. It slots beautifully between the GSA 1250 panzer and the crossy KTM 790 and for many people I am sure, the perfect match.