La Moto Mexicana - an Excerpt from Bike-India magazine Apr 2021

 I got the digital version of Bike India version through JIO and was delighted to read a fantastic story, afraid I might loose it after this month, the only way for me to save it was to write it down. (Screenshots were not that fun to read).

( Note: - neither the pictures Nor the story, I do not own both in this post.)

La Moto Mexicana (The Mexican Motorcycle)

Who am I? - Abhishek Iyer @pedalingon

Riding? - The Honda XR 150L (2019 model)

THIS HISTORY HAS ITS ORIGIN IN ME spending a month studying an adventure on a bicycle. Let me fill you first, though. A few years ago, I bicycled acress southern India, then a step further, along the length of Nepal, and, a year later, the length of Norway. It had been a  whole two years since the Northern Lights and the mind yearned for another epic adventure.

I found a slick-looking website about a six-week route through a desert in northern Mexico and, a couple of weeks with visa formalities taken care of, I was on a 24-hour bus ride across Mexico to the border wall: my starting point for this bicycle ride.

Little did I anticipate that this time things would be different. Just tow days into the ride. I would have to abandon my bicycle trip as I had packed too much for the ride and was paying for the weight of  it. With a heavy heart, I headed back to a town from the desert and decided to work on Plan B while sipping a cold local brew. Plan B would be to ditch the pedals and consider horses; not the quadrupeds, but the two-wheeled beauties we call motorcycles. A request for a motorcycle was posted on the social media, hoping that Plan B would be successful.

The next morning, I waited patently for replies on facebook Market place and, with little resourcefulness with Google Translate, I headed to a garage across town to meed Eduardo. Eduardo, with whom I got along very well, agreed to sell me his motorcycle and even offered to hold on to his name in its registration since there was no way I could legally buy a vehicle there. A really nice fellow that. Thus, a few excited runs to the ATM and about 35,000 pesos later, I was now a proud owner of a  2019 Honda XR 150L. Now the ride was most certainly on.

The plan? Ride across California from the north to the south zigzaging along the desert with the sea Cortez to the east and Pacific to the west, scenic beauty at its best. Now, although this motorcycle was not exactly a long-distance performance machine, it sure was a legitimate upgrade from a bicycle. So, I stuffed a cheap duffel with my camping gear, strapped it on to the motorcycle with bungee chords, and hit the road. I made a quick pit-stop at an Atuozone to pick up two liters of 15W20oil, an open-face helmet, and a keychain.

And there I was, about to live my own Motorcycle Diaries (devoid of any revolutionary thoughts, though) across the Baja peninsula, setting the asphalt ablaze with a top speed of ... er... 90km/hr. While I don't consider motorcycling a passion, something about the circumstances leading up to this moment really had me fired up.

Over the next couple of weeks, I was in for adventures I was not fully prepared for. Wild camping overlooking the Pacific, sharing magic moments with a surfer on a cliff one sunset, swapping bikes fora kawasaki KLR 650 to ride up to a national part, fishing for octopus with a local fishermen, grey whale watching in a lagoon in calving season, and stuffing myself with an abundance of tacos de pescados (fish tacos) and Birria.

Of course, there were several lows, too, such as painful ride through a storm to catch my flight back in time, having my phone run over by a lorry, and snapping my tent poles mid way into the trip. But then that is the kind of drama that makes motorcycling adventures so worthy.

The fact I realized for myself over these few weeks on the road was that when live gives you lemons, having a 150-cc motorcycle between your legs and miles of  long, lonesome road ahead makes good lemonade. Today, I find myself ogling at 650-cc mean machines here in India and fantasizing about an excuse to buy one of those and have my own Himalayan (mis)adventure.

Meanwhile, If any of you happen to be in Mexico and have time on your hands, you can go and use my Honda that is stashed away in Tijuana.

Follow Abhishek Iyer at youtube here

and facebook in @pedalingon