3 day weekends are rare and having a Goan Thruxton ride is rarer. This Triumph Thruxton was with me for a while and I had not really taken it out. Just one trip when I went out to donate blood. So, for the Republic Day weekend in 2015, Kavitha and I decided to head out.

Thanks to Prashanth for letting us use this beautiful motorcycle for this ride.

Prashanth had made a new rear rack and our ride would be a good test for it. I used my Cramster tank bag and dry bag. The saddle bags belonged to him since the upswept exhaust would not work with what I had.

After travelling on Royal Enfields for such a long time, the difference is immediately apparent. We made such quick time that we were well close to Chitradurga in a couple of hours. We stopped for lunch there.

Riding on the Thruxton, even two up with the loads that you see is very comfortable. The 990cc engine effortlessly cruises at about 140kmph. It does go faster, and I did take it “up there” a couple of times, but this is where the sweet spot is.

After the mandatory windmills shot, we did a long stretch till around Haveri. Long stretches on this bike are around the 200kms or lesser mark. The fuel light comes on and I cannot imagine running out of fuel on this.

As you can see by the long shadows it was late afternoon by the time we came across this little tea stall. I stopped and only then realised that it was abandoned. Not sure if it was for a day, or if the owners had just moved on recently. We just chilled out there, nothing to make tea from. But, it gave us some time to make a decision about where to call it a day. We could make the push to Goa without trouble, but missing all the beauty of the landscape while riding in the dark did not make it very appealing. We decided to stay for the night in Hubli.

The main thing the hotel needed to have was good parking. Now that we were travelling with a precious asset of another person, there was no way I was leaving it out carelessly like I could do with my Royal Enfields.

Once we were settled in, we went up to the restaurant for some drink and dinner. Surprise surprise, I see a few people in BOBMC Rider Mania t-shirts, headed towards the RM in Chandigarh tried to make up a conversation. Even for a BOBMC guy like me, the attitude seemed off. So, we had a lovely candlelit dinner instead and called it a night.

---

Goan Thruxton Diary – Day 2

The next morning, we made an early start. The roads were pretty free and the sun was keeping us warm from behind. Fully zipped up in the January chill, we caught up with a brand new Honda City. A 2015 model, no plates and ribbons on it. With empty roads and a car that were capable of close to 200kmph, we had a caged slave to clear the road for us.

We were meeting friends for breakfast and my stomach was already grumbling. Breakfast was 100 clicks away from Hubli. We made just the one stop on the highway. To make a call and some other stuff.  The dual-sport kind of helmet is a pain on a bike like this. I had no normal helmet after losing my older AGV I never bothered buying another and had been using this SOL for everything. If you want to ride something like this, get a normal shaped full face helmet. The wind blast is too much with the peak and it was beginning to show up as pain in the neck at speeds like this.

We were soon at the outskirts of Belgaum, the place the Karnataka government chose to put up a copycat Vidhana Soudha. The unoriginal building can be seen from about 50kms out of the city. The white mass on the horizon in the pic is that building. We had a nice breakfast with them catching up like friends do after a long time.

Soon it was time to cross the mighty Western Ghats, the view of which never stops giving me goosebumps. It was warming up quickly now compared to the early morning chill. As I came to a stop at this point a whole bunch of KTM 390s, Yamaha R15s and other motorcycles went past from what seemed like a satisfying session on Chorla Ghat.

We had a fantastic ride in the lower sections of the ghats where the roads were twisty and the visibility high. Must be one of my quickest. Kavitha has some video footage, but even I am yet to see most of it, one year down the line. The bike does feel heavy in the extremely twisty downhill sections, especially in touring mode. Since it has enough power to get out of tricky situations, its a bit okay.

And, then finally, we were in Goa! Thanks Aroo for a pointer on where to stay. Our spot for the next couple of days. The thatched cabin at the top stopped nothing and it was good we had our sleeping bags. It would have been uncomfortable otherwise.

We had a great time in Ashwem, generally binge eating at the various joints and lounging around. Got a lot of walking on the long beach too. So generic Goa stuff – lousy food, lousy scenery and lousy experiences. Not!

The place where we stayed at Ashwem, let us keep the motorcycle in their restaurant area each night. Thanks to them for that. And, they also did tell us about a few places that we could go visit on our way back to Bangalore. But, I definitely was not into that sales pitch, so we let that slide.A few scenes from our time there.

A few scenes from our time there. All shot on my older Nokia Lumia 1020, still a great camera phone if you can get one on Amazon.

          

So after a few days of lounging out there, we decided it was time to come back to corporate lives. And to working hard, so that it pays for this.

We left a little earlier in the day this time since we had to be back in Bangalore. And, I did not want to rush through it like ride out. We stopped at multiple places to make some pictures and rode on.

Chorla has a nice view point and we hoped that not too many people would be crowding that. Unfortunately, a few drunks with bottles strewn around. But, the view was good and they were not messing around, so live and let live it was.

On the way out, we had it easy with the traffic the end of the long weekend meant that we had to put the large engine and usable torque to good use. Shooting through the gaps that the cages on the highway created was the strategy on our way back. A Nissan Terrano driving way too fast for a car was our slave, this time around. I kept a good distance and used the gaps that he made for almost 150 km. The fuel low light was what made me drop off the highway eventually.

Our Goan Thruxton diary was almost coming to an end and it was great to have a motorcycle where we could make such easy work of longer distances. This with all the breaks and luggage thrown in.

Someday it would be nice to own a larger motorcycle.

Goan Thruxton Diary Gallery