La Moto Mexicana

Who I Am: Abhishek Iyer

Riding: The Honda XR 150L (2019 model)

This story has its origin in me spending a month studying an adventure on a bicycle. Let me fill you in first, though. a few years ago, i bicycled across southern india, then, a step further, along the length of nepal, and, a year later, the length of norway. it had been a whole two years since the northern Lights and the mind yearned for another epic adventure.

I found a slick-looking website about a six-week route through a desert in northern mexico and, a couple of weeks later with visa formalities taken care of, i was on a 24-hour bus ride across mexico to the border wall: my starting point for this bicycle ride.

Little did i anticipate that this time things would be different. Just two days into the ride i would have to abandon my bicycle trip as i had packed too much for the ride and was paying for the weight of it. With a heavy heart, i headed back to a town from the desert and decided to work on Plan B while sipping a cold local brew. Plan B would be to ditch the pedals and consider horses; not the quadrupeds, but the two-wheeled beauties we call motorcycles. a request for a motorcycle was posted on the social media, hoping that Plan B would be successful.

the next morning, i waited patiently for replies on Facebook market Place and, with a little resourcefulness with google translate, i headed to a garage across town to meet eduardo. eduardo, with whom i got along very well, agreed to sell me his motorcycle and even offered to hold on to his name in its registration since there was no way i could legally buy a vehicle there. a really nice fellow that. thus, a few excited runs to the atm and about 35,000 pesos later, i was now the proud owner of a 2019 honda Xr 150L. now the ride was most certainly on.

the plan? ride across Baja California from the north to the south, zigzagging along the desert with the sea Cortez to the east and the Pacific to the west, scenic beauty at its best. now,