MUSTANG ON MY MIND

Getting adventurous with the Ducati DesertX in the most hallowed regions one can ride to, in the whole wide world!

- VIR NAKAI

If you have a motorcycle in your garage you must use it to its full ability. So for the new Ducati DesertX in my garage, adventures have been calling. The thing holding us back was the safety pack to be installed on it, so from the moment that was bolted on, I was just waiting to head out. The final straw was when my friend Praveer called.

Praveer’s last bike was a KTM 390 Adventure, which I’d ridden and put through some real hard miles in Spiti last winter with Vijay Parmar (which Arjun Parmar wrote about in TURBOCHARGED) Praveer called and said, “Enough with work, I need a new bike and I need to ride.” A week later he had booked a brand new Triumph Tiger 900 Rally Pro with a wait of 10 days for delivery. He called again and said, “I need three days after delivery to wrap up work, finish the run-in and the first service and then where we ride is your problem.”

Now, with a date in hand, a plan began to form. We didn’t want to get stuck in the monsoon (in hindsight it was a brilliant plan), so I said we will go where the monsoon has not hit. Also, our plans were fluid so there were no bookings etc. The idea was we will choose a direction and just head out. So, after much deliberation and watching the rain (again, this is before all hell broke loose) we figured the monsoon was taking its time to reach Nepal so we will go there.

So there we were in the parking lot of my parent’s home in Chandigarh. Strapping down bags and running through the last lists of what we had left (we still ended up leaving some important stuff). Two new motorcycles and their eager riders, ready to head out looking for some adventures.