Wild Again

Could triumph have finally found the sweet spot we've been seeking in adventure bikes?

- Sherman Nazareth

In a world where the demands of the human mind outweigh the reality of the present, it’s only logical to find a compromise between the two. And that is the formula for progress. Scramblers once roamed a planet where rudimentary roads and unexplored terrain beckoned the adventurers and thrill-seekers within us. That was back in the 60s. Eventually the roads got better and the distances smaller. Adventure bikes were born to exploit this development; to conquer continents while keeping their riders in absolute comfort. Of course, we riders got a little too enthusiastic and soon thought these ADV bikes were their new off-road exploration tools. I’d call us tools, too, but with all the excellent marketing imagery of professional riders kicking up endless rooster tails of dust, can you really blame us? But with retro becoming the new black, Triumph has, very accurately, given us the naked Scrambler 1200 that it claims can do everything an ADV bike can. Minus the mammoth-like proportions of adventure bikes and maybe Triumph’s on to something.

There’s two versions of the Scrambler 1200 that exist, the XC and the XE. International journalists and our Indian ones alike, absolutely raved about the XE when they rode it in Portugal. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the ‘E’ apparently stands for Extreme according to Triumph. In India, however, we just get the slightly more tame XC for now. For the test ride, Triumph went the extra mile and decided to curate a ride from Chandigarh to Shimla and back via the highway, back-roads and a few trails. Perfect, I thought to myself. This was an opportunity to truly understand if Triumph has indeed crafted a true scrambler. With all the pseudo-scrambler hipster culture that’s pasted all over the internet, most motorcycle manufacturers seem to have conveniently forgotten what scramblers actually stood for during their glory days.