ONE BIKE TO RULE THEM ALL?

HERE'S THE VERDICT ON THE MOST RELIABLE RTW MOTORCYCLES

- Eglė Gerulaitytė

For years, the Kawasaki KLR650 and Suzuki DR650 have been considered go-to machines for those looking for a trusty RTW mount. They are simple, cheap, easy to fix and maintain, and reliable. Having ridden my own second-hand 2011 DR650 across the Americas and Europe, as well as attempted several rally races on it, I can attest to two things: The bike is indestructible (I’ve tried countless times to break it!), and it’s indeed cheap, simple, and easy to maintain, even by such an unmechanically-minded individual as me.

Then again, the DR is also an inelegant 650cc thumper that struggles on faster highways or when facing steep, rock-littered hill climbs. In other words, it’s not a high-performance road bike nor a hard enduro. That’s precisely the DR650’s point, of course. It will plow through anything you throw at it without complaining. It doesn’t do anything spectacularly, but it does do everything—with the flair of a stumpy but stubborn Shetland pony.

I’m not alone in this assessment. Plenty of veteran RTW riders, such as Michnus and Elsebie Olivier (Piki Piki Overland) or RTWPaul, have put hundreds of thousands of miles on their DRs. Heck, before there was Ewan and Charley’s The Long Way Round, there was Austin Vince and the Mondo Enduro and Terra Circa teams. In the ’90s and the early 2000s, they circumnavigated the world the hard way twice aboard Suzuki DR350s, the little cousin of the DR650.

The Kawasaki KLR650 has a similar reputation—sometimes lovingly called “La Cucaracha” (“The Cockroach”) for its amazing resilience, the