SLIDE AND SMILE

No Slush? No problem!

- Manaal Mahatme

Slush Fest, a ritual that started many years ago with one intention - having fun all day long with two-wheelers in rain and slush. And, of course, spend the next two days cleaning the mud and nursing sore limbs. This time, though, we decided to take a serious (kind of) approach, and learn a few things instead, all while staying true to the Slush Fest spirit. But what do we do if the rain uncharacteristically stays away? Well, go ahead and do it anyway.

Sunny and Nelly, the founders of ProDirt Adventure, were happy to lend us a helping hand and use their facility for the day.

Seeing the Royal Enfield Himalayan, the Yezdi Adventure and the Triumph Scrambler 400X, they had a wicked smile on their face which slowly faded as the Guerrilla 450 entered the scene.

I wouldn't blame them, but come on, we couldn't be that serious with our selection of motorcycles for Slush Fest, right? Little did Keshav and I know what the ProDirt duo had in store for us.

CHALLENGE ONE: WHEN IN DOUBT, THROTTLE IT OUT

Loose sand, ruts, fast corners and Loose Swede thes, fest corners and challenge. This track was meant to test the agility and handling of the bikes. Without a second thought, I reached out for the Himalayan. Keshav took the keys to the Adventure, and also because we wanted Nelly to handle the Scrambler, a dealer bike. Sunny was left with the Guerrilla.

Nelly gave us a demo run and soon after, the two of us joined in. Meanwhile, Sunny was still figuring out what to do with the RE roadster. We took some time to get familiar with the environment and went for our runs.

The brief was simple don't crash. Though we completed our runs successfully without falling, we were still a bit slower than what we had anticipated.

Suddenly, there was a dust cloud behind us, and out of that appeared Sunny-fully slideways.