CARNIVAL TIME!

We signed up for an off-road carnival, and we sure had a great time!

- Janak Sorap

It's Saturday morning. I've just ridden into ProDirt Adventure in Kamshet, Maharashtra. And while I was scouting for an ideal parking spot for the Suzuki V-Strom 250SX, a weird sinking feeling was taking shape. Was I the only fool here who thought it would be nice to bring an adventure touring motorcycle for an off-road event? As much as I didn't want to accept it, turns out, that was the case. Because everywhere I looked, I could only see motocross or off-road-focused bikes. Everything from KLXs to RMZs to CRFs to Indian bikes, like XPulse 200s and Impulses, most of them heavily modified for the dirt. I felt like the odd man out, and the yellow V-Strom stood there like a beacon of attention. But, they say, it isn't always the machine that accounts for everything, never does. With that faith, I offloaded my luggage into the tent allotted to me.

As I was walking back to the parking lot to complete my registration for the two-day event, several familiar faces started to appear. One of them was Yogi Chhabria, the man behind YC Design - Motorcycle Restoration, whose builds have been featured on these pages. Our chats were interrupted by Nilesh Dhumal a.k.a Nelly, one of the founding owners and chief coach at ProDirt Adventure. After a quick lowdown on the events that had been planned for the day, I started to feel a lot more comfortable about having got the V-Strom. In fact, Nelly was keen to know what the yellow Suzuki was capable of in an environment like this.