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From Bangalore to Goa on 2 KTM Adventure 390s for the India Bike Week

22nd December 2023, 14:08 by Ananth Iyer

The bike really did everything it was asked for. It gave us the confidence to do triple digit speeds all day long and the courage to break and turn in the mountains.

BHPian ramgkulkarni recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

As most of you know, my twin brother and I brought KTM adventure 390 earlier this year. Link to that thread.

With a lot of personal setbacks, we didn’t have a chance to ride the bike much. To give you an example, I did a couple of Blr-Mysore runs and overall clocked only about 1700 kms when we set out to Goa on 7th Dec. My brother did use his bike a little more than me and had clocked around 3500+ kms on his bike.

Finally, the biking gods gave us a break and gave us an opportunity to ride our way to IBW. We both had planned time off around the same time and the IBW timing was pretty well in the same window. We started planning 3 weeks before the departure and first thing we wanted to do was book the stay in Goa. We decided that we would reach Goa on 8th, stay a couple days, and depart on 10th. We found a fantastic place in Morjim right opposite the beach.

Our initial plan was as below:

Depart on 7th – Travel from Bangalore to Hubli, stay over with family there and depart early on 8th and reach Goa in time for the festival.
Stay on 8th, 9th night and again ride back to Hubli was another layover on 10th.
Finally travel back to Bangalore on 11th.

7th December – Day 1

We thought our initial plan was the right thing to do since we haven’t ridden more than 300 kms at a time at this point. Goa is roughly 630 kms from where we stay in Bangalore. The Hubli-Goa route is through the mountains and is quite a fun drive. On the day of the ride, we thought if we felt good, we would continue to Goa rather than stop at Hubli. Since it was December, good weather and Bangalore-Hubli road is brilliant, when we did reach Hubli we felt like we could do another 200+ kms, we left at 7 AM and reached Hubli by 1 45 PM with many breaks in between. By the time we finished lunch and stretched our legs, it was close to 2 30 PM. Little did we know what was in store for us.

Once we crossed Hubli, the roads went from 3 lane expressway to a single road with moderate traffic. The road condition also was unpredictable throughout and some stretches had barely any road but they were far and few in between. The 200 odd kms on the stretch took over 4.5 hours and we reached out resort around 7-7 15 PM. Our bums were sore but we were in high spirits and looking forward to some high spirits of our own. After a quiet night in Morjim and some sumptuous sea food, we dozed off.

First fuel stop in Chitradurga

New Chitradurga to Hubli highway

In our Kits

Pitstop before Goa

Panaji

Final Destination

8th December – Day 2

The IBW starts around 2 PM in the scorching Goa sun. We knew this was unrealistic for us and didn’t want to be so early for IBW. We decided to head to the sea and enjoyed the water for a couple of hours post breakfast. Then we roamed around Morjim and Vagator. Found a place to play some pool and found the perfect little place to have a Goan fish thali. Then we went back to the room, enjoyed the AC for a small while and reached IBW(Vagator) around 4 30 PM. We roamed around the grounds, there were some impressive custom builds and we both loved some Royal Enfield and Harley builds. There were dirt tracks and some phenomenal dirt track riding. We visited the experience center which had some great offers from a lot of biking accessory brands such as Rynox, Sena, Bluarmor and many others. The whole place smelled of petrol, sand and leather. And not to forget – barbeque! The entire place was one big party and we were there to experience it all.

Was it loud – definitely! Some folks loved revving out their big bikes and custom exhausts. There was an entire stall to just do burnout. What else to say! They had something for everyone.

I met a unique gentlemen who rode the OG TVS50 (with peddles) from Kanyakumari to Khardung La. He also had his small collection at the IBW – RD350, Jawa 350 type 640. There were some not so great buids, really obnoxious exhausts but hey! We just enjoyed the whole atmosphere.

Fish thali