The Storm in the Desert

How do you tame Rajasthan’s long and winding highways? With a blacked out, chrome garnished,baddass parallel twin beast with an attitude, of course.

- George Koshy

There’s a reason you don’t find many bikers at a shrinks’ office. Who needs one when the road is the best therapy around. There’s nothing that 12 hours of hard riding can’t cure. You roll up filthy, hurting in all the hard to reach places, with bugs in your beard and the smell of the road coming off you, but with a big, wide smile on your face.

But it was with apprehension that I approached the prospect of riding to Pushkar for the camel fair in November. I’ve ridden in Rajasthan before and thought the roads are mostly good, miles of unending tarmac with the landscape essentially unchanging tends to make things a bit monotonous. What I needed was a bike that’ll be fun, even if the road wasn’t.

As luck would have it, Triumph was pedalling the latest in their stable of worthy steeds, the Thunderbird Storm. The title you see on top is the first thought that crossed my mind. “The Storm in the Desert” sounded as good a story as any. So Triumph we shall.