Country: France

Language: French

Currency: Euro

Year: 2018

Distance: ~4,000 km

Route and Map:

Munich > Nurburgring > Cologne > Paris > Chambord > Massiac > Meylan > Nice > Barcelonette > Milan > Stelvio Pass > Munich

Ride on: Right Side

Metric System: Speed in km/h and Fuel in litres.

Machines: BMW i8 & BMW S 1000 RR

Some people say travelling is therapy; if that is the case, we are all patients. And travelling is more than just an escape from the mundanities of everyday life. It is exploring new places and drinking in the experience to enrich our souls, believe us, it does that. And that very definition had us attracted to follow this pursuit of enrichment of our souls. The pursuit is a result of which we have explored 54 countries and the thirst remains. 

Our love for automobiles also made sure that the exploration of new places happens in conjunction with the exploration of the best of the motorcycles/cars that this age has to offer. So when we got a stall at INTERMOT Motor Show for xBhp, we thought we’d spice it up with our ‘pursuit’. And staying true to that pursuit, we set out on another one which had us exploring the last ‘unvisited by us’ country in the European continent- France. And BMW obliged us with the top-of-the-line machinery from their stable- BMW S1000RR and BMW i8.

We landed in Germany and headed straight to the BMW Media Center from the airport where a 500 km ride to Nürburgring was in order. A 12+ hour flight to Munich had us jet lagged, but there was no time to be wasted and the lure of riding/driving the BMW S1000RR and the BMW i8 was a far greater force that easily overcame the jet lag. But a bigger issue of miniaturizing our 2 big suitcases, 2 camera bags full of luggage and fitting them in the car persisted. 

We were not only carrying the 2 leather suits and personal luggage for this 20-day roadtrip, but also the display and decoration material for the xBhp stall at INTERMOT. So there was a lot of luggage and the BMW i8 was never famous for its larger-than-life boot space or luggage-carrying capacity. But, we did it and we were on the road by noon. The day target was the famous Nürburgring race track and we had to reach there well before sunset to be able to ride/drive there. But when we reached Nürburgring, a motorcycle had crashed there and spilt some oil on the track. So the track had to be closed for quite some time. 

They reopened it but only for cars, as it was still too slippery for the bikes. So only the i8 could be driven there. Sunny wasted no time getting on the track and had the time of his life driving the i8 on ‘The Green Hell’ for 2 laps. I too boarded as the co-passenger for one lap. When we were on the track, there were so many other powerful cars that even the 300+ bhp BMW i8 felt a little underpowered. 

The Nürburgring tourist track is a 20.8 km long track and is full of some high-speed turns, some very tricky ones, some really tight corners, long straights, and changes in elevation. Another thing is that they release all the bikes and cars, irrespective of their class/category and/or driver experience, at the same time on the track. 

So, it becomes even more challenging as you have to constantly look out and give space to faster people coming behind you in addition to avoiding hitting slower/inexperienced people in front of you, which could either be a car or a motorcycle. And you have to be on top of your game for 20+ kilometres. 

Let me tell you, it is not easy. No matter how experienced you are in racing on the tracks, just 1 lap here would change your definition of track racing. And I strongly believe that every racing enthusiast should ride/drive here at least once in their lifetime. 

After spending a night at a hotel in a village nearby, we headed straight to Cologne the next day and reached just in time to attend the Photokina 2018, the world’s largest trade fair for the photography industry. The who’s who of the photography industry from around the world had pitched their tents at the Photokina. The one day we got to spend there just wasn’t enough and warrants another visit.

We also attended The Distinguished Gentlemen’s Ride – Cologne 2018, and we got a brand new Honda CB1000R to ride at the DGR courtesy of some friends in Germany because our BMW S1000RR had already been placed at our stall at INTERMOT 2018 where it remained for the next one week. 

The INTERMOT ended on October 7, 2018, and on the 8th, we were off to Paris. Our own Tour de France had finally begun, even though we were already at it for the last 8-10 days. We started after breakfast from Cologne and reached Paris just in time for lunch. The 500-odd kilometres between these 2 cities were done in about 5 hours, and en route, we crossed an entire country- Belgium. Just European things!

We had 1-1/2 days in our hands to explore Paris, which is way too little to explore what this beautiful city has to offer. But a great part of our time was spent in the Parisian traffic, stuck at the millions of traffic lights that this city has. This city seemed like it was obsessed with traffic lights. 

Such is the traffic condition that people have resorted to all kinds of miniaturized personal transport – like bicycles, roller stakes, and push scooters, yet walking seems to be the fastest mode of transportation in the city. But jokes apart, if you are into history and architecture, you could spend a lifetime exploring Paris and never get bored of it. We went bonkers shooting the BMW i8 and the S1000RR there, but clearly couldn’t get enough of it.

But let me tell you, if there was one thing during those 1-1/2 days in Paris the appeal of which rivaled that of the Eiffel Tower itself, it was our BMW i8. Being in xBhp, I have had the chance to ride/drive some of the most exotic bikes and cars in various corners of this world, but I’ve never seen so many people so intrigued by a machine as we saw here. Dozens, if not hundreds, people asked us for a selfie or a photograph with the car. And we couldn’t even count the number of people who kept staring at it with admiration and gave it that ‘wish-I-owned-one’ look. 

From Paris, we continued our journey southwards to Château de Chambord and beyond. We also ‘tried’ visiting the Palace of Versailles as well, but the queue to enter the palace was longer than the distance between Paris and Saturn’s second moon, so we decided to skip it and we couldn’t be prouder of ourselves for taking that decision.

The Château de Chambord or the Chambord Castle is easily one of the most fascinating man-made structures that we’ve seen. This magnificent building sitting in the middle of a jungle was once a hunting lodge for King Francis I of France and seems like it came out straight out of a fairy tale or a Harry Potter movie. Once we had seen Chambord Castle, we felt we had seen it all, so we proceeded further south towards Nice, visiting the cities of Massiac, Lyon, Meylan and Cannes in between. 

The highlight of this transit was a visit to the Lumière Museum in Lyon. It is here that the first cinematograph or video camera was invented by two brothers Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière.

Things got interesting from here on as we headed north from Nice towards the French Alps. Riding in the mountains is truly enchanting. And when you have machines like the BMW S1000RR and the i8, the magic is manifold. We felt like home again. Without disrespecting the speed limits and the general sense of safety, we enjoyed these machines to the fullest here. If I compare, I found the French Alps to be no more beautiful than our own Himalayas. 

However, the butter smooth roads, general cleanliness, controlled construction work, and the relatively less human population here tip the scale greatly in favour of the Alps. There were a few places here on the way to Barcelonnette with jagged mountains on one side and a river flowing on the other side that reminded me of Spiti Valley. The road was so narrow at a few places that it needed a great deal of care to drive the i8 through that. The French part of our roadtrip ended a little after Barcelonnette as we moved northward and entered Italy, but it wasn’t before we had a few more hours of fun in the French Alps. 

The beautiful mountain roads gave way to the boring highways of Italy as we reached the fashion capital of the world, Milan. But it was just the lull before the storm. Natural scenery-wise, the best part of the roadtrip was yet to come. The last 2 days of the ride saw us riding from Milan, Italy to Munich, Germany via the famous Stelvio Pass. Visiting the Stelvio Pass is a must if you are riding or driving in this part of the world. 

This is the second highest pass in the Alps sitting on the border of Italy and Switzerland. The 75 hairpin bends and the butter-smooth tarmac offer unparalleled riding/driving pleasure. It was the start of the snow season and we were lucky to find a little bit of snow at the top. A few days later, heavy snowfall would shut down the pass for the motorists. From here till Garmisch (where the famous BMW Garmisch Festival takes place) was a beautiful ride through Austria, but we were in a bit of a hurry to reach Munich to return the vehicles and catch our return flights home.

The final approach to Munich also got us on the German Autobahn for one last hurrah. I saw the speedometer of the S1000RR at 240 km/h mark before I slowed down as I was running extremely low on fuel and by the time I reached the petrol pump, I had just enough fuel left to go 7 more kilometres!

By the time, we reached BMW Media Center to return the bike and the car, we had close to 4,000 km on the odo of these amazing machines clocked in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and Austria. So, our Tour De France wasn’t a ride through France alone. France was the last European country remaining to be explored by xBhp/MotoGrapher and we did it in style on two of the most desirable machines we could ride or drive on these roads.

Dos and Donts of Riding/Driving in France

• Keep multiple debit/credit cards. The cards would refuse to work at one machine and then automatically start working at others.
• Some card swipe machines accept only the cards that are issued by France-based banks. So do carry enough cash for emergencies.
• We didn’t find many people sticking to the traffic rules in Paris. Honking and lane-cutting were very common. 
• People prefer speaking French only and you’d find relatively very few people who can speak English, especially outside the big cities. So do carry a translator app on your phone. We were using Google translation tools and it did help a lot.
• Do eat a lot of croissants.
• We both were carrying Vodafone connections with international roaming activated. We found Vodafone connectivity to be very poor in the France region and had to buy an Orange SIM card, which gave good connectivity overall.
• You don’t need to enter a PIN or code to operate your credit/debit card in France. So keep your cards safe. Anyone with your card can use it even if they don’t know your secret PIN.
• For a foreigner, getting a SIM from a France-based service provider is impossible, both prepaid and postpaid, as you need to provide proof of residence in France to get one.
• Do call your hotel to ask if they have free parking. Otherwise, you may end up with no parking or paying heavily for it.
• The tolls can be very expensive. So try and avoid the highways.

Axor Helmets

For the France ride, we were using a yet-to-be-launched by Axor Apex. The Apex series of helmets was made available in the first week of December 2018 and launched with a price tag of around INR 5,000. The quality of the graphics on this helmet is top-notch. We were using the shark face design from the series, and we must say the design went well with the aggressive and menacing looks of the BMW S1000RR. 

Talking about the design, the Apex also comes with a rear spoiler similar to what you find in the AGV Pista GP series of helmets, and this spoiler really enhances the overall looks of the helmet and also adds to the stability of the helmet during high-speed runs, which should be very helpful while riding naked bikes at higher speeds. 

For safety, the helmet comes with a Double D Ring lock mechanism, which means you can also ride on the race track where it is mandatory to use a helmet with a Double D Lock. It adheres to ECE R22.05 and DOT FMVSS No. 218 safety standards, which makes it eligible to be sold in Europe and the US.

The helmet weighs around 1.5 kg, at par with most of the helmets in this price range. During our usage, we found the helmet to be extremely comfortable, and the overall visibility and ventilation were very good as well. This helmet also comes with a sun visor and an anti-fog visor that was very handy, especially while riding in the Alps. There is also anti-UV and scratch-resistant coating on the visor. Other features/add-ons are a breath guard, a chin curtain and an anti-microbial liner.

Overall, we were very happy with this helmet and if you are looking for a good mid-range helmet with a budget of around INR 5K, we would strongly recommend you consider this Axor Apex helmet.

OnePlus

On this roadtrip around France, we were using two OnePlus 6 mobile phones as our Go-To camera and this was the second best thing we had here after the S1000RR and the i8 of course. We’ve used phone cameras on our previous roadtrips as well, but the camera on the OnePlus 6 has been the best so far. Once you use this phone and its brilliant camera, you’ll realize why they say that the line between a phone camera and an expensive professional camera is disappearing fast. 

The 16+20 MP dual camera setup at the back with optical stabilization worked like a charm even in the most challenging lighting conditions and this got us hooked so much that we ended up shooting with the OnePlus 6 most of the time, especially when the paucity of time was a big constraint and we only had few seconds to bring out the camera, shoot, and start riding again. This page contains some of the photographs we shot with our OnePlus 6 phone cameras, and we’re sure you’d agree that these came out pretty good. 

And then, the hardware on the OnePlus 6 is top-notch as well, it has ample RAM and a powerful processor to care of the most demanding tasks that one can come up with. The speed with which the phone unlocks with facial recognition is a testament to that. Looks like the day is not far when we’ll be doing a cross-country roadtrip with a cellphone camera alone.