Royal Enfield Interceptor 650

I had been waiting for the Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 for over a year. I had my eyes on it the moment it was introduced and finally it is here. The announcement was made on a weekday and so I had to wait till the weekend to finally lay my hands on it.

I went to the Royal Enfield Showroom in Himayatnagar and they had both the Continental GT and the Interceptor. Though the orange color interceptor was the most eye catching, the one they had here was gray. I went there after a nice 5k run and was a little skeptical if they would allow me to take it for a test ride considering I was in gym clothes and all sweaty. The executives at the showroom were really nice though they parked the bike inside, they let me take it for a spin.

At first as you can see from the picture on the right, the interceptor looked almost similar to my current bike the first version of the pulsar 180. RE stuck to the classic bike look and so they ended up having the typical round headlight and very simple dials as well. A speedometer on the left with a small digital display which had a fuel indicator and two trip meters and on the right was the tachometer with all the tell-tale lights. Even from the side both bikes looked more or less similar.  (I'm not going into much details because a lot of people have already video reviewed it and all the specs are also available online. I'm just giving a first had impression of the bike).

The scene was completely different as soon as I got on to the bike and I must say I loved it. The handle bar was slightly higher as compared to my bike but it took me hardly few seconds to immediately get adjusted to the Interceptor. One of the major USP of the interceptor is the twin exhaust and the new exhaust note. I must say it was music to the ears when I revved it. It was absolutely throaty and made it clear that there was a beast just waiting to let loose.

What was was incredibly surprising was how smooth it felt. It being a twin cylinder engine generating 47 bhp, was very very smooth. The gears just easily slipped into place and there were absolute no vibrations what so ever. Ive been driving my pulsar for 17 years now. It still is in great condition and doesn't rattle as such but when I push it, I do notice a lot of vibrations around the handle and the foot pegs. I hadn't driven any other bike apart from this so I didn't really have a reference point. The interceptor opened my eyes, the smoothness and the refinement was clearly evident.

It is a 650 cc and strangely it didn't feel as intimidating as I thought it would. I owned a Harley Davidson Iron 883 before and I still remember that I literally shivered when I first felt its power. I didn't have that issue this time but the surge of power was so smooth on this bike that it made me fall in love with it instantly. As soon as I opened the throttle the bike just shot through the streets and almost did a wheelie. The showroom guy behind me must've had his heart in his mouth when I was driving it.

It was a relatively short ride I took but I still could feel the weight of the bike and also the heat it produced. I wonder how hot it might get in the Hyderabad bumper to bumper traffic. Im still not at a stage where I could give a comprehensive review but I will surely test this bike a few more times before finally taking a call on whether to buy it or not.

All in all, it did leave a great first impression and Im really looking forward to familiarizing myself with the bike a little more over the next few days.

Keep watching this space for more.

A new post every day???

I actually started this blog hoping to add content on a daily basis, but I'm beginning to realize that its not as easy as it sounds. You either need to be a rock star with something interesting happening every single day or you need to be Casey Niestat who can make every single mundane thing interesting. You should check out his vlogs. They are actually addictive. 😉

Anyways, its a weekend and thanks to some really unfortunate (nothing serious) events, I had to cancel an amazing trip and all I did was sit home and sulk. Did that help? Not one bit. My sulking and my long face just messed up my mood, but people around me who were supposed to get it, didn't get it and eventually who turned out to be the looser? ME!! Yes me.

So saturday went down the drain and I thought I'll make Sunday at least interesting. I ran into a friend of mine yesterday who told me that there was going to be a Distinguished Gentleman's bike ride today morning. I love clicking pictures and so I thought it would be a great opportunity to get the cobwebs off my cam and go click some pics. I woke up in the morning and was at my friends place at 6:30am sharp as was decided yesterday but there was no sign of him. His maid told me that he had gotten back to sleep after opening the door for her. I thought to myself meh, lets not disturb him and went ahead to the venue.

There were hardly any people at the starting point. Another running event was taking place, so I just drove further on to see if I can find anything interesting to click. I went further on and found this amazing dog meet place and I just loved it. There was so many breeds of dogs there, some of which I didn't even know and they were just socializing. It was so much fun to see these beautiful thorough bred dogs just running around, exploring, making new friends and all that. I clicked some good pics, here are a few of them.

I found them extremely adorable and after spending about half an hour here, I went back to the bike ride venue. Luckily, there were a lot of bikes this time. I was kinda hoping that it would be a bigger event with a lot of interesting bikes, but it wasn't the case. All of them were regular bikes, a lot of Royal Enfields, a Kawasaki Ninja 300, a Harley Davidson Street 750, and loads of bike we see almost every day . There were some classics like a Jawa and a few old royal enfields but other than that, except the Triumph Tiger, nothing else was interesting. I clicked very few pics and left the place.

All in all, it was a fairly uneventful day. Hopefully next week will turn out to be more interesting.