AoA Folks,
I'm planning to visit Gilgat on bike by the end of this year and I am not sure if I can endure 1500+ km journey so I decided to spend some time on the road to see if that's doable for me so last night (Friday) I decided to travel to Lahore.
Being mostly a car guy, I had too many fears about 300+ km travel but it wasn't bad at all. It was eid-weekend so thought, what could possibly go wrong and if anything goes wrong, I would have time to dealt with it.
Here is what I prepare for this journey
- Oil change - Zic M7 (10w40)
- Top up fuel.
And that's about it - I know it's stupid having no spares at all but since it was GT-road so I was willing to take the risk but thankfully - I didn't encounter any troubles whatsoever.
I left Islamabad (bahria town) at 9pm, entered Lahore at 1:25am and reach destination at 2am - that's door-to-door time. The bike's headlight worked pretty well and it's manual dipper is so visible on the road that even trucks and buses were able to see me.
Engine Performance
The bike performance was good, I did not notice any engine heat-up issues and no loss of power whatsoever. Once I covered about 130 kilometers straight, I had to overtake a bus and I had to rev the bike to max and was comfortably achieve about 120 without any issues and after this overtake, I resumed my journey at 7K RPM without any troubles.
Suspension
I put the bike on softest possible suspension settings so there wasn't any backpain, shoulder pain or any such thing and it was a comfy ride. I had my backpack with the laptop, jeans/t-shirt and a jacket - that's about it.
Breaks & Stops
I took about 3 breaks during my journey, each of about 8 to 10 minutes.
Road Conditions, average speed & milage
I drove at the average speed of 7K RPM which is somewhere between the speed of 95 to 100 km/h.
311 total kilometers and 8 liters of petrol - I guess, it's about 38 liters to a liter. Fuel average was never a concern but I noted it down just for the sake of information.
80% of the road from Islamabad to Lahore is good enough to maintain good speed. Except one patch 2 km patch, I was able to maintain the speed of 90+ all the way.
Second part of the travel
I'm traveling back to home tomorrow (Sunday) and planning to leave between 4pm to 6pm.
It was a night time so I didn't bothered to take any pictures but I'm thinking to take some pictures on my way back home.
Funny observations
During this travel, as I pass by various towns and cities, a number of times, many guys especially CG125 guys, tried to go along with me, most of them pushed their bikes to get ahead of me and after a few seconds, they slowed down. I even saw some 70s to do the same. People push their bikes to limit and the slowed down to 50 or 60 km/h speed. I never understood this philosophy. I even met a group of 6 guys on 3 CG125s - all wearnign helmets - which was pleasnt to look at, but no one was to maintain the speed that I was maintaining. I also tend to think I'm going faster than the usual traffic (except a few cars which were maintaining 120+ km/h speed).
Everyone was trying to race but no one tried to maintain the speed on which I was traveling. May be I had to advantage of comfy ride.
There are a number of other obversations that I noticed which I might write about next week when I'll be home.
If everything goes well and time allowed, I'm planning to buy tekken 250 for next journey to Gilgat .
I'm sharing a couple of pictures of bike