Since then, I didn't think much about biking as I was busy with moving to my new home. Now that my family and I have settled down, my mind drifted back to looking at smaller bikes.
My go-to bike for riding to work has always been my Yamaha Tricity. Small, nimble, and very safe in wet weather. Yes, it lacks power but it's 80-90kmph is sufficiently fast enough on Singapore roads. Most importantly, it is a breeze riding in heavy traffic.
The Triumph Tiger 800, on the other hand has been a mixed bag. It's a nice bike to ride if there's nothing wrong with t and in light traffic. So far, I had spent about $1500 to replace the starter (bike cannot start at all) and 3 top coils (bike kept stalling at low RPM and jerky when accelerating). Nothing that the mechanics at Mah Motors couldn't handle but the dent on my wallet made me wonder if I need such a heavy bike in the long run.
And so I started looking around for a middle-weight sized bike which I can use for commuting and maybe some off-roading/touring. I was looking at Vespa 300 GT, Triumph Scrambler and even the Harley Davidson Street Rod 750. And so it was rather strange when I ended up looking at the Royal Enfield Himalayan... my impression of RE had never been positive as they built old tech and unreliable type of bikes but when I stumbled a photo of the Himalayan in Carousell, I was instantly attracted to it. The seller, whom coincidentally, I had met before when he was working at Mah Motors, was selling a Jan 2019 RE Himalayan with almost 10k done.
I got to see the bike first hand and was surprised by the decent quality and finish of the bike... heck, it even comes with dual channel ABS (which my Triumph and Yamaha do not have) and this is Royal Enfield we are talking about. It has disc brakes, analogue speedo and tacho, a digital compass (!), and other useful stuffs. It's air cooled but should be capable enough to handle the single cylinder 25HP 30NM. I didn't haggle the price down as I thought the seller had done a good job keeping the bike in good shape and it was well priced to begin with.
Long story short, I bought the bike within a week after viewing, send it for a 10k full servicing at Universal Motors, and the bike now felt awesome! I did a round island ride on Sunday morning (110km) and a bit of off-roading. The bike ideal cruising speed is between 80kmph to 100kmph. Beyond that, vibration starts to get to the hands and the bike doesn't feel stable... so definitely not a bike to take on a major highway for long distances. Off-roading and poor road conditions is where this bike really shines! No problem with lane splitting.
Overall, I am happy with the bike. Now what to do with the other two...