Re: Foreigner with lots of questions about a long (~8 month) India tour (buying/registering, route..

About Himalayan, the 2018 model or the 'bs4' updated version, which is a minor mechanical update on the original bike had good reviews. Royal Enfield seems to have sorted out the reliability issues on this model, I suggested this to you as you're thinking about staying away from highways, and the ride quality on Himalayan is pretty good for bad roads and off roads.

Dominar on the other hand has more power and more torque, it's pretty versatile as a stock bike but changing to off road tyres will definitely help, 'timsun' has affordable tyres set for dominar or you could go for Pirelli scorpion.

Bash guards and crash guards are easily available, from multiple companies, "carbon racing", "lluvia", "auto Logue" are some well known manufacturers for modifications on dominar

About raising the ground clearance, you can check this video

youtu (dot) be/0ELAzR4VaHk

About Xpulse, no idea.

Camping can be done in few places, some places are restricted and may need permission from forest authorities if you want to camp, there are many people who go for camping in western ghats, there are also some travel companies who take care of the issuea with authorities etc, overall you can, but it's only in few places, you can google a bit about camping, you should be able to find some groups. Or you can contact groups like BMC (Bangalore mountaineering club) which is a group that conducts campings and trekking trip very regularly, they can help you to get more insights and how can you plan your trip.

Re: Foreigner with lots of questions about a long (~8 month) India tour (buying/registering, route..

Bike: Get any non RoyalEnfield 200cc+ bike , you will be trouble free , as others said get Dominar either used or new , with lot of service centers of Bajaj across the country and reliability you will be in free mind. and never get RE bikes for continuous long rides [your assumption of reliability is true].

Bike Purchase: try to negotiate a deal with local rental company here, so they can buy back the bike from you at the end, or ask any indian friend to buy for you.

Cops: No , they are not corrupt as ppl are making it here, as you will be traveling different stats , there might be chance of some rough cops faceoff, if your documents are 100% correct , you wont be facing any issues , but still you face hardly 10% wrong mood cops , anyway in my experience most of them helpful if talked nicely and with patience.

Route: your planning looks ok , temp will be slightly higher side from past 2 years in south , but its same story all over world from past 2 years high temp.

Stay options: as you will be getting local mobile num/sim , better to install apps like goibibo or makemytrip and book stay, it work out pretty cheaper and good stay options , instead ripoff from hotels.

Nepal journey: you might have to check at last check point before crossing, you might need separate visa but also separate permit for bike to crossover.

Re: Foreigner with lots of questions about a long (~8 month) India tour (buying/registering, route..

For the stay, where you can't camp, you can try Oyo app which will ensure you get budget offer for the rooms. And when you visit Punjab, I'd be glad to help if you need any and of you'd like to visit some places around here.

Re: Foreigner with lots of questions about a long (~8 month) India tour (buying/registering, route..

Also, there is a Nepal thread on our forum where there are fellow riders living in Nepal, they'd be able to help you regarding your visit there.

Re: Foreigner with lots of questions about a long (~8 month) India tour (buying/registering, route..

I've never had the police ask for a bribe or give any trouble at all in Southeast Asia, and I've spend years there.

The only country I've been to where it's a constant nuisance is Mexico. It's compounded by the worry that the police might go so far as to kidnap you (or be criminals dressed as police).

Re: Foreigner with lots of questions about a long (~8 month) India tour (buying/registering, route..

It's not that bad here, mostly police will be careful if they think you can report them or create a viral video or something. Some may expect "tip". But if your documents are good they won't trouble you.

Re: Foreigner with lots of questions about a long (~8 month) India tour (buying/registering, route..

Then you would have a good time here, it's similar to South East Asia, not like that Mexico thing.

Re: Foreigner with lots of questions about a long (~8 month) India tour (buying/registering, route..

I’m about two months into the trip now (currently in Kerala, started in Mumbai) with the Xpulse 200 FI. For anyone wondering by way of comparison, since I asked the questions, roads in India (at least so far) are FANTASTICALLY better than (most of) Latin America or Southeast Asia *outside of cities*. I can’t get over the sheer number and (relative) quality of paved roads everywhere in rural India so far, and highways/toll-roads are also very good on the whole. I haven’t been on any dirt for more than a few km and I’ve tried to stay off the beaten path. Urban roads can be bad and unpleasant (you could learn a thing from Latin America about implementing one-way streets on narrow urban streets), but Indian drivers are far better / safer / less suicidal than I’ve seen many places.

I also haven’t been hassled by police at all beyond being asked to show my license + IDL at a few roadblocks.

The only knock against touring in India is it doesn’t seem like you’ll ever be on a truly lonely road since there are people literally and often inexplicably everywhere. Of course I knew that coming in just by looking at a population density map; India is pretty unique in being almost uniformly densely populated.

Re: Foreigner with lots of questions about a long (~8 month) India tour (buying/registering, route..

Thanks for sharing your experience bro. Yes, you can't get away from people coz of the high population. For that you'd need to go up mountains or in desert.

Re: Foreigner with lots of questions about a long (~8 month) India tour (buying/registering, route..

Updating for any future travellers. Currently I’m on a vacation-from-my-vacation in Burma, having left the bike in Northeast India.

From the southern tip of India all the way up the east coast I have to say there’s really no reason for anyone to ride this part of India. There are a few days worth of enjoyable riding in the eastern ghats (inland Orissa basically), but otherwise it’s uniformly unenjoyable at pretty much every level.

Things finally took a turn when I got to Meghalaya and the population density to scenery ratio got back down to a reasonable level, but the absolute highlight of the trip so far has been Mizoram. Reminds me more of riding in Peru or Bolivia than anywhere else in India. Especially on a dirt bike like the Xpulse it’s heavenly. Having lived years in East and Southeast Asia it’s absolutely the jewel; not just totally different from India but also from Southeast Asia. I’m not even sure I should be letting people know for fear of ruining it.

Will update in a few months. Planning on going through Nagaland, highland Sikkim (as I’m skipping Arunachal due to the confusion and expense of permits), and then Nepal.