Learning to Ride a Royal Enfield Motorbike

(or:  “If the fire had reached the petrol tank… BOOM!”)

“Kick it! Kick it like you mean it!”

I am trying to kickstart a 350 CC Royal Enfield motorbike on a tropical beach in Kerala, South India, but the main problems are:

Here I go! Learning to Drive a Royal Enfield in Muzapphilangad, Keral

1) I have agreed to take lessons in riding an Indian motorbike, even though I can barely handle a gearless scooter

2) my driving instructor is also my boyfriend

3) my driving instructor/boyfriend has been riding motorbikes for well over 30 years, and has little sympathy for my inability to understand anything that has an engine. And because this is India, I am also surrounded by a group of teenage boys who cheer every time I fail to start the bike.

The Royal Enfield Motorbike

The Royal Enfield is the legendary British motorcycle that is still manufactured in India and is the oldest motorbike in the world that continues to be in production today. When the UK manufacturers stopped production in the 1970’s, the Enfield Factory in India’s Madras (now Chennai) kept going and is still producing these classic bikes.

Enfields are very popular with foreigners wanting to ride a bike in India but also have an enthusiastic local following. The Royal Enfield is perfect for travelling in India, because it can handle potholes better than modern bikes, but it is also notoriously difficult to kickstart.

Muzhappilangad, Kerala’s Drive-In Beach

Muzhappilangad Beach is a gorgeous 6 km long beach in the South Indian state of Kerala, but despite the white sands and inviting wave nobody comes to Muzhappilangad to swim: instead, it is South India’s longest drive-in beach.

An Autorickshaw on the Beach in Muzhappilangad, Kerala

During the day the beach looks deserted, but in the afternoon it starts to fill with cars and scooters, as locals come here to watch the sunset, to meet each other and to drive up and down the beach. The beach is also a popular location for driving lessons. And so I have ended up here hoping to learn to drive this dinosaur of an Indian motorbike.

When I eventually manage to start the bike, the boys and my instructor cheer. Soon I am driving on the beach, changing gears, braking and turning left and right, all at a whopping speed of 20 km/hour.

Then the Bike Catches Fire

My fourth lesson is interrupted when I notice that the bike is on fire.

I am just practicing smooth braking when my left thigh starts to feel hot. I look down and notice the smoke that is rising from somewhere underneath my bum. I brake and jump off the bike. When I see that a part of the bike is in flame I start to scream.

“The bike is burning!” I yell, but my instructor/boyfriend is more than half a mile away (and I guess this is why he told me to not to drive too far, because if anything happened, he would have to walk a very long way in the hot Indian sun, which is exactly what he is having to do now).

The Burnt Battery

As I’m screaming from the top of my lungs, eight Keralan men, all dressed in the traditional South Indian loincloth, lungi, run out from a coconut grove and start to throw sand in the fire. As my instructor/boyfriend finally makes it to the bike, the wet sand has extinguished the flames.

“You Were Very Lucky”

We soon notice that the fire (apparently caused by a short circuit and so not entirely my fault) has destroyed the battery. What we need now is a new battery, so we hide the bike in a nearby coconut grove and hail down an autorickshaw to take us to the nearest town.

I notice that the eight men are all staring at me.

“You were lucky”, one of them says. “If the fire had reached the petrol tank…BOOM!”

All photos by Enzo Coribello

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