Yezdi Adventure: 1,500km Touring Review

Introduction

I love long-distance touring on motorcycles and have done quite a few road trips over the years. I'm more of a solo traveller and like to ride at my own pace without any agenda. But, when the opportunity came to ride to Goa for the India Bike Week 2024 with my colleagues, I was excited from the word go. There's nothing more pleasurable than going on a bike ride with like-minded folks and sharing the biking brotherhood. I had the Yezdi Adventure at my disposal. But, instead of the more popular NH48 Mumbai-Pune-Goa highway, we decided to take the old Mumbai-Goa highway (NH66), known for its scenic vistas and winding ghats. The overall ride was quite eventful. Read on to know more.

Likes

Engine performance: The engine is surprisingly the strongest suit of the Yezdi Adventure. Be in the right gear and the motorcycle pulls entertainingly with its tacho-needle sweeping fast to the redline. It’s punchy and quick anywhere above 3,000rpm. Be it going around serpentine mountain roads or cruising on the highway, you almost never fall short of performance. Interestingly, it’s equally refined and devoid of any serious vibrations. At times, I went a bit generous with the throttle on the ride, crossing 120kmph, but the bike felt calm, except for a negligibly mild buzz on the seat.

Handling: This one isn’t a sharp and pointy motorcycle like a street naked. But, for a big, heavy ADV with a 21-inch front wheel, it is surprisingly nimble. Sure, you need to put in some effort to tip it into corners, but on most of the long winding bends on the NH66, the motorcycle held its line and composure without any issue. The handling is predictable and instills a lot of confidence to push the bike around corners. This was helped in equal measures by the tyres. The Ceat Gripp XLs stick to the tarmac and don’t feel squirmy or lacking in grip across road conditions.

Seating comfort: The Yezdi Adventure’s rider seat is spacious and well cushioned. Throughout this ride, the seating comfort was very good. Moreover, I could easily mount my helmet bag on the pillion seat, leaving enough and more space for me to move around on the seat.

Ride quality: Another likeable aspect is its ride quality. Although it doesn’t ride flat or plush across surface undulations, it offers a good balance of comfort and sportiness. The ride is devoid of any sudden jolts to your back and you will enjoy the ride quality for about 80 per cent of the time. However, on some of the poorly surfaced sections of the NH66 highway, the softer setup ran out of compression and bottomed out at high speeds around sudden dips in the road or when I encountered mid-corner bumps.

Fuel efficiency: The Yezdi Adventure is quite frugal as well. Despite gunning the motorcycle around the serpentine ghat roads and doing triple-digit speeds all day long, the motorcycle returned an efficiency of nearly 26.5kmpl. This combined with the 15.5-litre fuel tank, one can easily get over 400km of range on a tank full.

Dislikes

Buffeting: The biggest issue I faced during this Mumbai-Goa ride was the relentless wind buffeting from the stock visor. For my height of 5’7”, the windshield just didn’t work and I faced a lot of buffeting around the sides of my helmet. This induced a lot of fatigue throughout the ride. Moreover, the windshield isn’t adjustable for height, and your only respite could be to either remove it or use a windshield extender.

Ergonomics: Although the overall ride comfort is decent and the wide handlebar provides enough leverage, the high-set footpegs result in a knees-up riding posture. This is largely due to the exhaust pipe being routed under the footpegs. This resulted in an awkward rider’s triangle with my knees acutely bent, requiring me to stretch my legs more often than I’d like.