A summer fling in a foreign land! That is an apt description for the month-long dalliance I had with the Royal Enfield Classic 650.
For the 30 days that I had it on loan in London, it brought me joy every time I swung my leg over the saddle.
Shiny, as I christened it, was my gleaming and good-natured companion on rides that began at a Victorian-era freshwater well funded by an Indian maharajah and ended with a silent salute to Raja Ram Mohan Roy at 6 am on a London street. In between, we crossed borders and time zones, and rode on roads on which Panzer divisions once rumbled.
A bit of Benares in Britain
The ride to the Maharajah’s well
Soon after Shiny arrived, I headed to Stoke Row in Oxfordshire, 40 miles to the west of London. On the motorway, Shiny was happy to cruise at 70mph (112kph) with me and a pillion on board. For the umpteenth time, I marvelled at how well Royal Enfield has not only mapped the 650 twin-cylinder engine but also mated it so nicely with the 6-speed gearbox.
The lesson I learnt that day, though, was that to ride with my ankles exposed was not a good idea. The protruding bulge of the crankcase and the placement of the footpegs meant I thoroughly burnt the inner knuckle of my left ankle because it would touch the crankcase every time I moved my foot in to shift gears.
When we stopped for a coffee by the river at Henley-on-Thames, an elderly gent walked up to the parked motorcycle shining in the sun and regarded it with such apparent admiration that it made me smile. When we walked up, he politely asked if the motorcycle was new or an immaculately restored vintage. His innocuous question spelt a triumph for the 650’s design team. They have managed to wrap modern engineering in gleaming nostalgia.
He told me he had owned a Royal Enfield “bright and red” in the fifties, “when they were manufactured up in Redditch”, he added, pointing to the north.
In Stoke Row, tucked off Kit Lane, stands another example of a cross-continental mission. Edward Reade, a British civil servant in India, once told Maharajah Ishree Pershad Narayan Singh about the scarcity of clean water in the Chilterns. Moved by the story of a boy beaten for stealing a drink, the Maharajah funded the construction of a well. It still stands, well cared for and loved – a poignant gift from Princely India to Victorian England.
Photographing Shiny with the Maharajah’s Well was positively poetic. A motorcycle by a brand born in Redditch and rejuvenated in Madras, parked beside a well gifted by a Maharajah from Benares. Both relics of empire, one keeping history alive, the other reimagined for modern relevance.
Crossing the channel to chase history
To Bastogne to follow the Battle of the Bulge trail
Early one morning at the peak of the summer heatwave, I set off for Dover. The 90-mile ride to the English Channel was comfortable because rather than carrying my backpack on my back, I’d strapped it onto the pillion seat. At the border control at the Dover ferry dock, all I was asked to produce was my passport and Schengen visa. I was carrying all the required documents, though.
While waiting to board the ferry, I met two Dutch motorcyclists returning from the Adventure Bike Rider Festival, where they’d experienced splendid British hospitality and food. So, their exuberance for all things British was infectious. The sight of my Royal Enfield sparked a happy conversation that continued through the two-hour sailing to Dunkirk.From Dunkirk, the 174km ride to Brussels was along the E40. Belgian roads, with their 130kph speed limit, seemed to be throwing a challenge to Shiny, further exacerbated by the fact that other motorcycles were tearing down the overtaking lane at speeds well over the limit. But I desisted. The Classic 650 is a gentleman tourer that invites conversations. Getting conned into competitions like a superficial speedster is just not its style. Shiny and I were happy to sit in the slowest lane at 100kph. At times, when I had to overtake a long trail of trucks, the 52.3Nm of torque on tap was sufficient to strongly surge ahead in sixth gear itself.
Brussels welcomed me with cobbled streets and an every-so-often whiff of waffles.
Notwithstanding its 243kg weight, Shiny was very easy to manage in traffic thanks to its low centre of gravity. The ride over cobbled streets, though, was quite uncomfortable due to its stiff suspension.
Shiny drummed up a fair bit of drama when I parked on the Rue Auguste Orts outside the Marriott Hotel Grand Place – bang in front of the imposing Brussels Stock Exchange building – its shining chrome, teardrop tank and bulbous twin exhaust pipes attracting glances of appreciation.
Pierre Charron, the director of sales and marketing of the Marriott, where I was staying for the night, was smitten by Shiny too when I met him in the hotel’s secure parking the next morning. Pierre turned out to be quite the fount of knowledge about local lore and locations of the Battle of the Bulge, and he gave me a crash course in getting the best out of my two days there.
I have had a fascination with the events of the Second World War since I was 10 years old, and riding to Bastogne in the Ardennes felt incredibly exciting to me.
The Bastogne War Museum was a captivatingly immersive experience telling the story of the campaign through Allied, German and local Belgian characters. On display were uniforms, equipment, weapons, automobiles, letters, newspaper clippings and even a photo taken at the launch of the car that would later come to be known as the Volkswagen Beetle. I involuntarily chuckled as I drew a parallel to the car launches of today, which are complete chaos with influencers buzzing around the car like houseflies. At this launch in June 1938, there was just one influencer – the Führer! Everybody else maintained strict order.
For World War II buffs, especially those who have watched Band of Brothers, this museum and the areas around Bastogne are hallowed ground.
Band of brothers in Bastogne
Just 4km from the Bastogne War Museum lies Bois Jacques, a pine forest near the village of Foy. Step quietly among the trees, and you will still see the shallow foxholes dug by the men of Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division, during the winter of 1944-45. It was here, in snow and silence broken only by shellfire, that teenagers became veterans almost overnight. For weeks, they endured hunger, cold and relentless German attacks – an ordeal immortalised in Band of Brothers’ Episode 6, ‘Bastogne’. Today, the forest is serene, yet those depressions in the earth remain as scars of that bitter season.
A kilometre further is Foy. Easy Company launched a daring assault from Bois Jacques to liberate this village from German forces in January 1945. Here, another scar lingers. On a house overlooking the main street, bullet holes mark the spot where a German sniper once held Easy Company pinned. After repeated failed attempts to silence him, it fell to Darrell “Shifty” Powers – a quiet marksman from Virginia, raised on squirrel hunts in the Appalachians. He calmly studied the window, waited for the slightest movement, and with a single shot from his M1 Garand, ended the standoff. The incident is depicted in Episode 7, titled ‘The Breaking Point’.
The next day, I went for a 90-minute ride to La Gleize, intentionally setting Google Maps to avoid highways. After all the sprinting across motorways and autoroutes, Shiny deserved a soothing saunter. That morning’s ride through the verdant and meandering ‘N’ roads of the Ardennes was a perfect example of the kind of roads this Royal Enfield thrives on. The creamy twin-cylinder engine, which was just a murmur at 70kph, added a meditative quality to the ride, allowing me to enjoy the road as it unfolded.
I was headed to this little village because Pierre had told me a rather interesting story about a Tiger II or King Tiger (Königstiger) parked there.
Even though I knew it would be there, it was quite a shocking sight to come upon it. Sixty-nine tonnes of German steel parked in a corner like any other car, its 88mm cannon pointing straight at me as I rode into the village.
This tank (King Tiger no. 213) was a part of SS Panzer Regiment 1 led by Waffen SS Kommandeur Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper, who spearheaded the failed offensive through the Ardennes.
Riding back from Bastogne, I felt a quiet fulfilment at finally seeing the forests and villages I’d read about since boyhood. But I had also ridden past cemeteries, both Allied and German, each with its rows of crosses stretching into the horizon. It was a stark reminder that books and films might sometimes glorify battles, but war always leaves behind haunting grief that is measured in graves and lingers through families, communities and generations long after the guns fall silent.
The Blue Plaque Trail
Before London awoke, I rode to homes where illustrious Indians once slept
In summer, London yawns awake indecently early. By 4.30, the sky is already rinsed with light. It seemed a fine time to ride, before black cabs began to bustle and the pavements filled up with tourists and takeaway lattes. To give my morning more meaning than mere mileage, I traced a circuit connecting the homes of Indians who, long before me, had walked these very streets – men who had gone on to shape India’s path through the twentieth century.
So, at 4.45 – with Shiny purring softly under me with its exhausts at a ‘do not disturb’ decibel level – I slipped through empty boulevards and narrow mews. The air was brisk, the roads were clear, and I momentarily had the city almost to myself.
Over three unhurried hours, I followed a circuit from Barons Court to Hampstead Heath (see map), connecting the former homes of Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Tilak, Vivekananda, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ambedkar and Tagore. One by one, the plaques appeared like faint blue echoes of lives once lived, each man carrying in his head an idea of India still waiting to be born.
I couldn’t help but wonder. Did young Mohandas, painstakingly searching for vegetarian fare on meat-dominated Victorian menus, ever imagine his bespectacled face would one day stare back from banknotes? Did Raja Ram Mohan Roy, battling Sati and other patriarchal social evils, know he was chiselling himself into history as the ‘Father of the Indian Renaissance’?
And Tagore, scribbling verses on a cold December evening in 1911, perhaps by the dim glow of an oil lamp – could he have imagined what he was setting in motion? That the lines he penned, at first just a poem to be sung, would travel across time and generations to become a nation’s anthem? That one day, his words would halt a billion people mid-step, drawing them to attention in schools, stadiums and cinema halls, binding them, if only for a moment, in a shared silence of belonging?
That morning’s ride felt less like a tour of addresses and more like a quiet conversation with history.
The motorcycle beneath me was itself a small paradox: British in its birth, Indian in its heart, and straddling both worlds as gracefully as the men whose doors I stopped at.
Lunch with Gordon G May
280 miles to meet the master moto tourer
The day before Shiny and I parted ways, I took it on a 280-mile round trip to Stafford and back for lunch with Royal Enfield’s brand historian and gentleman adventurer, Gordon G May.
By now, I’d grown accustomed to Shiny’s nature and little nuances, including the rpm it was happiest at and how far I could lean before the footpegs scraped. It was also now second nature for me to kick out the side stand without my boot brushing the hot exhaust and leaving a black smear on the shining chrome.
To meet me, Gordon travelled from Manchester on ‘Bullet’, which is what he’s christened his 1953 500cc Royal Enfield that he rode from Manchester to Madras over 8,400 miles in 2008.
Over fish and chips and ginger ale, Gordon spoke of his other, more imaginatively christened machines called Peggy, Roxy, Rollo, and the mischievously named Chlamydia (thanks to an STD on the number plate).
The Oakley Arms served as a fine stage for our conversation. Between forkfuls of pub grub, Gordon reeled off the kind of yarns only someone with over a million miles in the saddle could tell. The sort of stories that make even the most diehard sofa-dweller toy with the idea of buying a map, a tent and a questionable motorcycle.
Goodbye, Shiny
1,392 miles over one month across three countries
Handing Shiny back was like saying goodbye to that kind of friend who never once complains about or sulks over the surprises a road trip might throw. Returning the key, I felt that melancholic pang reserved for the end of a summer romance or a holiday fling.
The Classic 650 didn’t seduce me with speed or shouty horsepower. No, it won me over the old-fashioned way – steady hum, dependable charm, and the kind of presence that makes you feel you’re in good company.
Not a machine built for drag strips but for heartstrings. And yes, it tugged mine good and proper. In fact, the scar of the burn on my ankle makes me smile since it brings back good memories with this motorcycle!