The View of the Lo Manthang

The view as you ride down into the upper regions of Mustang towards the ancient walled city of Lo you need to stop and stare cause there is so much to gawk at. Also the trail you ride down is quite hairy so better to stop and stare.

The Bridges of Lower Mustang

Drinking Beer and chilling on a Saturday evening made me upload a video to "You Tube". But its a video in full res of me crossing one of the bridges of Lower Mustang. I posted an Insta version on the gram a few days ago. 

 

Tanking Up on Sideburn and Dice Magazine

At the first Tank Up. We are going to have to have separate post on that next I feel. At the coffee counter I put all my personal copies of all the Sideburn Magazine I own so that people could sit grab a coffee and flip through the magazines. The idea was to kind of bring in some of the culture behind motorcycles from around the world and showcase it at our weekend. 

From there I realised how hard it is to get these magazines into the country so I spoke with Gary the Editor and asked him if I (going further Tank Up) got be the distributor for Sideburn Magazine in India. Gary jumped at the opportunity and viola I am now the distributor for Sideburn Magazine in India. 

For those who follow Helmet Stories and dont know what or who Sideburn Magazine is follow this link and take a look for your self. Sideburn Magazine 

Order Issue 49 with us now. Fill in the link a the bottom of the page. 

Once the first batch of Sideburns were ordered I thought why not make a corner at Tank Up a library with Magazine and Books that talk about Motorcycling and the culture that revolves around our favourite past time. So I contacted the good peeps at Dice Magazine and asked if they had a supplier in India and if not would they happy to have me as that person. It didnt take them long to say of course they would happy for me to take it up. So before I knew it I had ordered the first batch of 10 magazines. Which showed up at my door just as I was leaving for Lo Manthang. 

Again for the uninitiated follow the link to learn about Dice Magazine  

 

The cool part of all this is that we have been able to bring Sideburn down and keep the price the same as the cover price + Shipping + if customs decides to Tax us. (Sideburn is 7GBP and Dice is 20USD). 

This is just the start I will move this to a proper space on the Tank Up website (we need to make a Tank Up website) where you guys will be able to see what Issues we have with us and what is on the way. 

For now all the people interested in Sideburn Issue 49 and Dice Issue 94 - 96 fill in the link as we are going to be sending out an order later next week. 

FILL LINK TO ORDER MAGAZINES HERE 

It’s been a long long time

It's been a long long time since I did one of these. I think I have forgotten the fine art of blogging. We used to do lots on our blog all the time but it seems we just came to a grinding halt one day. Instagram for sure had a huge part to play. The ease you can post and publish, the way you could connect with like minded people from around the globe was super easy. But lately I have to admit that Instagram that amazing app that has giving me soo much is becoming a big fat turd.

So let's blame Instagram for killing this blog way back when and being the reason I am here resurrecting it.

Let's hope this carry's on…

The Royal Enfield Trials

So last year Royal Enfield launched a new varient of the Bullet 500 and 350 the Trials edition. The bike was more or less just a nod to the past with some edits to the the existing Bullet into a trails edition very much like the bike Johnny Brittain rode to victory back in the day. 

The fun part of the launch was that Royal Enfield brought down an actual Trails rider to teach us how to enjoy the sport. They put together a small course with three stages and we rode it and competed against each other. 

View this post on Instagram

Getting all the important bits of Trials motorcycling.

A post shared by Vir Nakai (@virnakai) on May 6, 2019 at 8:16pm PDT

Stage 1

The stages were not long but they are full of all sorts of fun bits and bobs. Stage 1 it had a tricky last sandy turn which I totally botched up coming into and I thought I would stall the bike (you can hear the engine in the video I almost killed the engine). That’s the worst a stall is 5 points and that is just a nono. I ended putting my foot down at one spot because I felt I would end up dropping the bike (also 5 points) and ended up snagging one point for it. 

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Three stages has been marked out for us to ride and test out mettle. The stages are not long but they are full of all sorts of fun bits and bobs. This was stage 1 it had a tricky last sandy turn which I totally botched up coming into and I thought I would stall the bike. That’s the worst a stall is 5 points and that is just a nono. I ended putting my foot down at one spot because I felt I would end up dropping the bike (also 5 points) and ended up snagging one point for it. Well watch and see for your self.

A post shared by Vir Nakai (@virnakai) on Mar 27, 2019 at 9:50pm PDT

Stage 2
Stage two was the toughie. I got to see many many people go up and not make it up without a dab or make it up at all. It was uphill and one side was sandy and not so steep while the other side was more firm but steeper and more packed. By the time I had my go most of the other teams had torn up the field but no one had made it to the top without without gaining a point or five. Until I got my turn and it seemed I found the line eveyone had been looking for all morning. 

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Stage two was the toughie . It was uphill and one side was sandy and not so steep while the other side was more firm but steeper and more packed. By the time I had my go most of the other teams had torn up the field but no one had made it to the top without without gaining a point or five. The rest is here to see

A post shared by Vir Nakai (@virnakai) on Mar 27, 2019 at 11:34pm PDT

Stage 3
Stage 3 was longer with elevation changes and clayey muddy green bits. There was a moment before the descend I felt my leg was going to go down but I made it through in one piece without picking up points.

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Stage 3 was longer with elevation changes and clayey muddy green bits. There was a moment before the descend I felt my leg was going to go down but I made it through in one piece without picking up points. Later today I shall stitch all the stages in one and put it up on IGTV with the added bits of the time trial and the hill climb in it.

A post shared by Vir Nakai (@virnakai) on Mar 28, 2019 at 1:52am PDT

Stage 4
Stage 4 was just a race around a track for the best time. 

 

Such a fun way to spend a day playing with a motorcycle. Royal Enfield really has learned how to host fun events for the launch of their motorcycles. 

What was the icing on the cake was it turned out that Royal Enfield was actually taking down all the points and all us media monkeys were competing with each other and there was a trophy waiting the winner at the end of the day. 

Whats even funnier was that the winner for the days trails event was me...

A year later...

A week or so ago before this virus scare hit the world I put out on Instagram stories a question that should I go back to blogging all the fun stuff we are upto? Seems Instagram has taken up all our bandwith and the blog is just kinda dying away. Which is a shame because I mean the blog is the blog and Instagram is cool but it aint the blog you know. 

So I think we at Helmet Stories should take this time that we have been grounded to catch up on one years blog posts. 

So here goes let me check on what we did last year in March and start updating asap. 

 

Oil In The Blood: A film about custom motorcycles

We saw the full Oil and Blood film at Mama Tried a few weeks ago and all I can say is I came out of the film fully motivated to start chopping up some of our bikes. The question is should it be the Himalayans or should it be the Continental GT.

If you get a chance to watch the film do it!

The Mama Tried Show 2019

Ever since Instagram I find we blog less. Its not because we are lazy and we don't ever get down to it (ok sometimes that may be a reason) but I think people dont have the focus to check out a longer post than on Instagram so we end up focusing on that more. Sadly a brilliant show like Mama Tried is very hard to showcase on just Instagram. I mean we would be at it forever to show all the madness that ensued there. 

So what I have been able to do over the last few days is get together just a few shots (like 200) of what the main show looked like. All the motorcycles are not here just the ones that piqued my interest. 

The Mama Tried show is an is an indoor invitational held in Milwaukee, WI (That is the US for people who dont know) that connects motorcycles and builders to fans and riders alike. Keeping the fire stoked all winter long. The Show features over 100 motorcycles from builders of all calibers—flat-tracker, hill climber, chopper, and bar hopper.

I tried putting them in some format but when they got uploaded something went wrong and it just went haywire. So if you have any questions on any bikes best thing to do is drop me a line on Instagram (Vir Nakai) and we can chat about the stuff there. Or you can add a comment at the end here and I can get back to you. 

So here it is check it out. Just Some of the motorcycles from the Mama Tried Show 2019