Let me tell you something about myself. I love touring. I've ridden from Nagpur to Goa and back, Nagpur - Leh - Delhi, I've done Pune to Goa and back a couple of times, and many small weekend rides. I want a capable motorcycle on which I can tour and commute to office everyday (with more emphasis on touring). I'm 21 years old, just started working so I want something that'll be relatively cheap to maintain. My budget is something below 4 lakhs (my dad will be gifting me the motorcycle)
Here are the bikes I'm considering:
Kawasaki Ninja 300
KTM RC390
KTM 390 Adventure
Honda cb500x
Ninja 300 :
I personally feel in love with the ninja the moment I saw it at the showroom. Its a great tourer with a long range and has a great build quality. I also liked the sitting stance, the spot on handling, the high revving twin and the big bike feel that the ninja gave me. The only problem I have with the ninja is that it's high maintenance costs. I'm told that the ninja has long service intervals which kind of justified the high cost of its parts. But I heard that the ninja's fairing costs 72,000 bucks. This really put me off as I don't want to constantly have the fear that I might go bankrupt if I met with an accident on the ninja. Ninja owners kindly provide your inputs.
RC390 :
I know that the rc isn't a tourer due to it's aggressive sitting posture and tiny fuel tank. But people on R15's have been touring without much trouble. Also the rc is more powerful, has more torque, is lighter and costs half as much as a ninja. And personally, I love it's looks. However, there have been many cases recently of d390 rims shattering. Bajaj/KTM in response said that when designing rims, there's a tradeoff between lightness and strength of the rim and that they chose lightness over strength. This was quite a lousy response. They need to address the rim issue before somebody gets killed.
390 adventure and cb500x :
These bikes would be great tourers and would be perfect for my requirement. But the there's no word about when the 390 adventure is coming to India, and no official news about launch of the cb500x.
Additional info:
I'm currently living in hyderabad and plan to ride to Goa (my home town) often. The traffic here in hyderabad is pretty bad. So I'm thinking of not selling my apache and using it for commuting.
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