OF MOTORCYCLES, MOUNTAINS, AND ‘MUSTANG'

A roadtrip to the fabled Mustang Valley with an unlikely companion in RC 390

- SAGAR BANERJEE

This Mustang madness started back in November 2017 at my Chennai-BhutanSikkim-Chennai ride of 7,500 km. And all thanks to my elder brother Santanu Banerjee. His Mustang stories had me enamoured. Credit also goes to another very good friend of mine, Arunabh Majumdar who was on his Tri-Nation Trans Himalayan Scooter Run 2017 where he did Mustang with a Honda Navi scooter.

Day 0 - I had to get the bike serviced and express service wasn’t an option this time so I had to leave the bike for a day to pick it up on the next one. Not the way I wanted things to go since I had to start the next day but that was just how it was.

I got back home, went off to bed, and in the middle of the sleep I woke up getting a call from a very good friend of mine, Shaan Nazeem. He wanted to ride somewhere before he joined his work back at Kuwait and had a plan for Pokhara, Nepal. It was 10 pm and I posted a Facebook status asking about a Mustang with an RC390. In the next hour, I got at least 7 to 8 calls from different riders across the country asking me not to do it on the RC390.

Now the plan was that Shaan will start one day before and I will join him somewhere near Lucknow as he was riding a Pulsar 180 and was planning to cover a lesser distance in a day, but fate had another twist and my bike was not ready till the first afternoon. So, I got my bike fixed and got some new shoes for my Optimus. And this is how the Mustang dream started.

Day 1 - Chennai to Siddipet - 773 km