[TheHelix0202]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

It is a Carbonado X14 backpack which I wear to just carry along 2 hydration bladders, one each for my wife and myself. I take this backpack along only if we are doing Ninja trips riding through the day in the hot sun, especially the summer months. Since the givi tankbag carries all the trivial nitty gritties, this backpack has no other load and is really weightless while I ride.

One nice advantage of this backpack during some trips is - when we go out sightseeing at the destination, I can wear it along and keep all the typical touristy stuff inside this - wallet, cap, sunglasses, water, memorabilia that we buy, etc. All in all, a good multipurpose product.

On a related note though, I find carrying my huge phone and wallet in the pockets of my jeans or hiking pants rather uncomfortable when riding in summer. It's causing rashes on my skin. Would you recommend that I just stuff em into the Viaterra Seaty that I have installed on my bike, or is there any other solution? I just got a brand new Viaterra Fly tank bag delivered to me yesterday as well, but as of now, I don't have the need to carry anything much for daily commute to college, except for the laptop perhaps, so I don't think I'll use it much.

[Dieseltuned]

wow thats a lovely home. Could you elaborate on the route you took and the road conditions. I will be in Coorg in the first week of april hence the query. Also, what's the weather like ?

Regards
Diesel

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by TheHelix0202

On a related note though, I find carrying my huge phone and wallet in the pockets of my jeans or hiking pants rather uncomfortable when riding in summer. It's causing rashes on my skin. Would you recommend that I just stuff em into the Viaterra Seaty that I have installed on my bike, or is there any other solution? I just got a brand new Viaterra Fly tank bag delivered to me yesterday as well, but as of now, I don't have the need to carry anything much for daily commute to college, except for the laptop perhaps, so I don't think I'll use it much.

Carrying it in the Viaterra Seaty should be fine, as long as you take care of the risk of thefts, if you forget to take it after you reach your destination

Generally a small tankbag would solve this purpose of carrying your wallet, phone, etc instead of putting it into the pockets. In fact carrying those in the riding gear pockets could be risky in case of an accidental fall / crash. In city commutes it shouldn't matter so much anyway, I use my jeans pockets for city commutes.

What bike do you ride, if I may ask? If you have a metal fuel tank, consider using a small magnetic tankbag for this purpose (take care of scratch proofing on contact patches with PPF or something). There are many variations of tiny metallic tankbags from popular manufacturers like Rynox, Carbonado, etc, and some more lesser known brands on Amazon. Viaterra Fly is a huge bag of around 18 litres capacity if I'm not wrong. Check out tank bags in the capacity range of 4-5 litres.

Here is an example of what I am suggesting:
https://www.amazon.in/Taur-Riding-Re.../dp/B09JNNYXJ4

Originally Posted by Dieseltuned

wow thats a lovely home. Could you elaborate on the route you took and the road conditions. I will be in Coorg in the first week of april hence the query. Also, what's the weather like ?

Regards
Diesel

Thanks for your kind words Dieseltuned.
The route I took was: Bangalore - Nelamangala - Hassan - Belur - Chikmagalur - Aldur - Balehonnur - Jayapura - Hariharapura - CrepeGinger homestay.

From Coorg, your route will be something like: Madikeri - Somwarpet - Shanivarasanthe - Echalapura - Sakleshpur - Mudigere - Aldur - Balehonnur - Jayapura - CrepeGinger
You can blindly follow google maps and it will mostly route you through the same path I listed out.

The weather right now is quite warm in the western ghats. Expect daytime temperatures to hover around the mid or higher 30s, and night time temperature would be around 18 degrees celsius. In April you can expect an afternoon burst of thundershowers most of the days. Not very pleasant mountain climate as such These regions get very cold and wet after June and remain pleasant all the way till February, but March, April and May are quite warm and humid months, barring some occasional thundershowers in the second half of the day. Hope you enjoy your vacations down south!

[TheHelix0202]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

What bike do you ride, if I may ask? If you have a metal fuel tank, consider using a small magnetic tankbag for this purpose (take care of scratch proofing on contact patches with PPF or something). There are many variations of tiny metallic tankbags from popular manufacturers like Rynox, Carbonado, etc, and some more lesser known brands on Amazon. Viaterra Fly is a huge bag of around 18 litres capacity if I'm not wrong. Check out tank bags in the capacity range of 4-5 litres.

Here is an example of what I am suggesting:
https://www.amazon.in/Taur-Riding-Re.../dp/B09JNNYXJ4

I ride a KTM ADV. True, the Fly is large, almost the size of a full sized helmet itself! I have 2 inch handlebar raisers too, so I was wondering about the efficacy of the Fly tank bag.

Thanks for sharing the link, something like that was exactly what I was looking for! The fact that it could be slung across oneself is a very neat touch!

[AKSO]

Ah, you got the Kawasaki hard luggage panniers. Looks good on the bike. I enjoyed reading your post especially as I also ride a Ninja 1000. Did you face any bike issues when the weather was hot?

[TheHelix0202]

So my tank isn't metal, so the small sling bag thingy wouldn't work, but I believe Rynox sells some waist pouch for 1,350 bucks. Seems to be VFM, though for now I'll just stick to putting the bigger tank bag to use.

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by AKSO

Ah, you got the Kawasaki hard luggage panniers. Looks good on the bike. I enjoyed reading your post especially as I also ride a Ninja 1000. Did you face any bike issues when the weather was hot?

Yes AKSO, these are the Kawasaki original Panniers that I bought along with the bike and have been serving me well over the past 4+ years

The bike performs flawlessly and I have not faced any issues till date, regardless of weather. The bike is heat-tested even by riding for 300-400km over various trips till date, at 45-50 degrees Celsius type of temperatures in the searing summer Heat of south interior TN and north KA .

Originally Posted by TheHelix0202

So my tank isn't metal, so the small sling bag thingy wouldn't work, but I believe Rynox sells some waist pouch for 1,350 bucks. Seems to be VFM, though for now I'll just stick to putting the bigger tank bag to use.

Ah ok, I think the Viaterra seaty should be a good option then for small personal items and documents. The rynox waist pouch is going to be pretty useless on the bike, trust me. That thing is more usable if you go out on hikes/treks or some such outdoor activities, but on the bike it is not going to be comfortable.

[AKSO]

Always been meaning to ask, what does the Avg readout (in this case 18.8) mean on the display. Is it the average fuel consumption per litre of petrol from the last full tank and trip meter A reset to zero or is it the average fuel consumption of the bike from all time? Would be great to know.

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by AKSO

Always been meaning to ask, what does the Avg readout (in this case 18.8) mean on the display. Is it the average fuel consumption per litre of petrol from the last full tank and trip meter A reset to zero or is it the average fuel consumption of the bike from all time? Would be great to know.

Strange as it may seem, that average fuel consumption figure is not tied to tripmeter A or B as such. Consider it as a separate tripmeter C which does not show the kilometres covered, but it will only keep measuring your fuel consumption from the time you last reset it. You will have to manually reset the average fuel consumption yourself whenever you want to check it for a specific distance. If it has never been reset from day 1, then that number is basically your average over the entire odometer distance.

To reset the average fuel consumption gauge, you can navigate to that display (AV will be displayed for the average consumption while instantaneous FE will not have AV displayed), simply hold down the lower selector button, either on your handlebar or on the instrument console for 3 seconds or so. This is the same button you use to cycle between fuel tank Range, outside temperature, instantaneous FE and average FE. Once this is reset, it will start measuring the FE from that point in time.

Generally to avoid confusion, before starting any of my trips, on the previous night I reset tripmeter B and this Average fuel consumption gauge one by one. Then I know that the FE recorded is exactly for the tripmeter B distance. Hope this clarified the doubt you had Do note, whatever I said applies only for MY2017-18-19 models. For the 2020+ N1000SX models, the menu layout is different on the TFT display and I have no clue on that.

Tripmeter A I reset everytime I refill fuel, and I use that number to keep track of distance covered from last refuel so that I can plan for the next refuel depending on range.
Tripmeter B I reset once before the trip and do not disturb it for the entire trip duration - home to destination to home, so I can look at the average consumption gauge later to refer to FE over the entire duration of the trip. That's just me though, different people may use these differently

[AKSO]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

Strange as it may seem, that average fuel consumption figure is not tied to tripmeter A or B as such. Consider it as a separate tripmeter C which does not show the kilometres covered, but it will only keep measuring your fuel consumption from the time you last reset it.

Thank you so much. This is exactly the kind of answer that I was looking for. Waiting to try this AVG reset the next time I set out. I too use Trip Meters A and B as you have set out in your post above.

[KarthikK]

Ride to Green Nest Resort, Kotagiri, Nilgiris (March 2023)

This turned out to be a bonus ride in March. The mercury was soaring in the south, but we Bangaloreans usually have the Nilgiris mountains to enjoy cool climate whenever we want to .

This was a different trip (all cars and one bike) - me meeting some decade-old TeamBHPian friends in their smokin' hot cars - forum legends such as Dr.AD (BMW 320d), abirnale (XUV7OO), graaja (BMW 3GT), RSudarsanan (BMW 320d) and tilt (Thar) and praveenbalan (BMW 330i). On the way back, we caught up with another set of legendary members for lunch - robimahanta (BMW M340i), Vid6639 and Suhaas307 (BMW 328i)

This was going to be a stag trip so I was going solo anyway and decided to take the Ninja to be able to keep up with the mighty beasts in the convoy. We had nothing much on the agenda other than to catch up on some chit chat sessions and enjoy the good weather and food.

abirnale and Dr.AD have already contributed their amazing trip report in this thread.
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/trave...nary-trip.html (Bavarian, Indian and Japanese machines | An ordinary destination and an extraordinary trip!)

I don't have too much to add above their report as such, barring a few pictures and words on my own ride. This is more of a customary ride report on this ownership diary of the Ninja, and a different and special one at that, probably one of the first ones featuring other car BHPians instead of biker BHPians . Many of the images in this report are from Dr.AD and abirnale, special thanks to them for shooting me in many candid moments while riding, most of those images will be treasured now.

Coming back to the trip, we had decided that I would be departing a bit later than the others since I don't have toll stops, and in general a bike can keep up faster average speeds in expressway traffic. So I ended up getting carried away by the silky smooth Mysore expressway and overshooting the breakfast stop of these guys, going ahead by almost an hour. Here is a picture of a stop at sunrise somewhere before Mysore



I made a stop at CCD Gundlupet to wait for the others to catch up. CCD was mostly empty and I had a leisurely breakfast and hot chocolate to pass the time



Soon everyone caught up at Cafe Pugmark, inside JLR Bandipur just before the forest checkpost to go together from there.

abirnale captured this sly shot of me from behind



From there on it was a relaxed ride through the forest. Here is a picture from the forest checkpost border crossing over into Tamilnadu. The forest landscape was all brown yet had its own beauty.



Rider's view



The awesome XUV7OO of abirnale, deceptively fast and smooth mile muncher.



This legend needs no introduction on the forum - the Red 320d of the 'travelogue king' - Dr.AD



The newest member who added sheer driving pleasure to his garage - bhpian praveenbalan with his preworshipped G20 330i



Another stalwart on the forum - graaja and his Estoril blue 3GT



The group stopping for pictures before the ascent into the Nilgiris



The Ninja before the mountain twisties began



It was awesome fun riding with Dr.AD's F30 320d in the twisties



Close-up of the Ninja taking a breather at Masinagudi



A couple of candid shots of yours truly shot by abirnale





And a nice solo shot of yours truly by Dr.AD



We stopped for a refuel break at Ooty town before continuing onward to Kotagiri. Surprisingly I found XP100 in Ooty , this trip was almost completely done on IOCL's XP100



It started raining for a while up in the mountains, and I had to put on my rain gear while I joined the others for a photoshoot in the twisties



Closeup of me in gaudy fluorescent rain gear, lol!



The rest of the car gang



Soon we reached the resort by 2PM, Tilt and graaja had taken the other side of the ascent route - Mettupalyam - Kotagiri and had reached the place before us. graaja was in the parking lot to welcome us.


This resort is called Green Nest Resort, and it is situated a few kilometres away from Kotagiri town. The approach road is steep and involves a bit of off-roading, but there was nothing untoward as long as one is careful about sudden bumps and steep potholes. I had my own single occupancy room for the night. It had a small sitout area outside the entrance



And a sitout 'loft' inside



The room itself was quite spacious and equipped with all the basic necessities





The bathroom was compact but sufficient



We soon sat down to some sumptuous lunch and elaborate chit chat sessions. This amazing carrot-halwa was a standout in the lunch spread



In the evening, some of us stepped out to enjoy the fresh air and tea estates surrounding the property







Poet's bench - a viewpoint area inside the resort overlooking the adjoining valley and tea estates

[KarthikK]

Ride to Green Nest Resort, Kotagiri, Nilgiris (March 2023) (continued...)

The resort is situated on the edge of a hillock of tea plantations, allowing for magnificent views all around



I managed a shot of the Ninja in front of the resort entrance in the last bits of sunlight at sunset



Watching the sun go down from one of the viewpoint areas



A nice macro of a flower shot by Dr.AD



After some more chit chat sessions, it was time to retire for the night. We woke up early to a rather misty morning





Mist condensation on the Ninja's fuel tank



We went for some casual hikes around the resort. The sedans tried some trails for timepass



The Ninja also tried some trails but I was too lazy to venture too much into the mud



Soon it started to get bright and sunny so we decided to call it a day





After a simple breakfast at the hotel, it was time to depart homewards



abirnale was shooting some rare birds en route and he offered to take some more shots of me as I made my way out of the dirt trail out onto the highway



Never look a Ninja 1000 in the eye! (high beam)



Another close-up shot



My Ninja with abirnale's XUV7OO



And the final solo portrait



Since a bike inherently escapes traffic gaps easier than cars, I ended up losing everyone on the way back via Kotagiri - Mettupalyam - Annur - Avinashi in the single lane traffic. I was solo for this entire distance and just stopped a few times for casual snaps while descending the Nilgiris on the southern side









It was a rather boring ride on the expressway from Avinashi to home. Stopping for a rehydration break somewhere near Erode



We stopped and regrouped for an impromptu lunch at Saisangeet CCD, Thoppur before proceeding homewards to close the curtains on a short but sweet overnight ride. This ride added a simple ~700km on the tripmeter.



A word on the awesome Maxima Chain Wax which lasts very long and performs very well in hot and dry weather (not so long lasting in wet though). This was the state of the chain after 700 km in heat and a lot of dust! Looks good for another few hundred kilometres!



Aside from the trip report, on recommendation from friend and BHPian ebmrajesh, I purchased a pair of these awesome Earplugs from Pinlock (yes, the same company who makes those anti-fogging inserts for helmet visors) and I have to say they are very efficient in cutting off wind noise. I found them even better than the older earplugs from NoNoise that I was using all along.

Pinlock Earplugs



One set comes in a box like this and contains 2 pairs of earplugs, there are 2 sizes depending on ear fit needed. However there is only one set of noise filters (red part in the centre of the earplugs) so one has to fit the filters in whichever pair he/she uses. The whole box is quite large to carry in tankbag luggage and I still prefer my old NoNoise plugs' tiny keychain-sized earplug case for portability.



There are no rides planned in April (generally the better half and I try and avoid April month due to excessive tourist traffic surge everywhere during summer vacations), but there are many rides planned for May end onwards. Until my next ride report, thanks for reading!

[Cyborg]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

Surprisingly I found XP100 in Ooty, this trip was almost completely done on IOCL's XP100.

Karthik, another lovely trip, superbly described with photographs and property

How do you find IOCL’s XP100 in your riding experience compared to say the XP95 and normal fuel. Request your descriptive abilities to come to the fore again.

I couldn’t find any difference in the ride on XP95 versus the normal fuel. Tried two tank fills of the stuff on my earlier Triple.

Thank you - happy, safe riding/travelling.

Cheers

[AKSO]

Super ride report. Those places like Mettupalyam, Kotagiri etc bring back recent memories from my South ride in Jan. Those tea estates and twisties in the Nilgiris are a treat to put the Ninja 1000 through.

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by Cyborg

Karthik, another lovely trip, superbly described with photographs and property

Thanks a lot Cyborg sir for your kind words as always!

How do you find IOCL’s XP100 in your riding experience compared to say the XP95 and normal fuel. Request your descriptive abilities to come to the fore again.

In my experience, XP100 brings out the best of the bike (referring only to the Ninja 1000 here) in terms of power delivery, refinement and throttle response. High speeds appear sooner, the refinement is top notch and the throttle response is extremely quick. There is no doubt that this is definitely the best fuel available in the country today for high performance machines.

XP95 is good in terms of power delivery and throttle response, but not as instantaneous as with XP100. On the refinement front on the Ninja 1000, XP95 and XP100 probably offer the same level of refinement I would say, but XP95's throttle response is not as crisp and urgent as with XP100. However, considering the cost advantage and vast availability of the XP95 compared to XP100, it is a very safe touring option for these bikes, so much that I have completely switched to using only IOCL bunks and XP95 and I am able to easily tour to every nook and corner place in the south, running only on XP95 and a ~300-320 km tank range on the Ninja definitely helps prolong the refills.

Regular fuel I don't use much except if I have no option at all. With 91 octane petrol, although Kawasaki insists the bike can handle it easily, there is a noticeable detuning done by the ECU when it detects lower octane petrol and the power delivery and throttle response both get a bit muted in comparison to running 95+ octane. Prior to the availability of XP95 in 2018-2020 era, I used to use regular fuel while touring. Now with XP95 available practically everywhere, I haven't had to use regular petrol in over 3 years

Generally because the Ninja is used only for roadtrips of 800-1000km a month, the delta cost (approx 50 bucks more per litre) of XP100 doesn't pinch much for 1-2 tanks, so I always try and fill up XP100 on the eve of every trip departing from home. A bunk dispensing XP100 is under 2km from my place, so that helps too. During the trip I fill up mostly only XP95 (or XP100 if it is available) everywhere else I refuel, so the net octane number is always hovering above ~95-96, ensuring maximum smiles for every mile, lol!

To summarize in short,
XP100 - Super smooth refinement, Instant power delivery, throttle response, noticeable improvement in acceleration even above triple digits, seamless cruising and overtaking at high speeds no matter what the rpm or gear

XP95 - Super smooth refinement, Better power delivery and throttle response than standard 91 octane petrol, no-nonsense acceleration and speed gains but not as direct as XP100. Best of both worlds for touring with the right balance of good pricing

Regular fuel - Average refinement (relative to the other two), muted power delivery and throttle response (relative to the other two), average acceleration and cruising speeds (relative to the other two). Only option if no other higher octane fuel is available in the vicinity

On a different note - on my Honda CB500X, the XP95 and XP100 both behave the same way and there is no difference between the two. Both have a marginal improvement over regular petrol in terms of refinement, but power delivery feels the same. This is probably to be expected considering the lower compression ratio on the adv compared to the inline4 1000 of the Ninja, so higher octane won't necessarily do anything different on the CB apart from being cleaner. In fact for the CB, I somehow find HP regular petrol to be very smooth in refinement compared to even XP95. So I guess eventually every bike/brand might react differently.

I couldn’t find any difference in the ride on XP95 versus the normal fuel. Tried two tank fills of the stuff on my earlier Triple.

I hear you, even neil.jericho said that on his street triple the XP95 felt no different from regular IOC petrol. Perhaps you can try XP100 once just to see the difference.

Originally Posted by AKSO

Super ride report. Those places like Mettupalyam, Kotagiri etc bring back recent memories from my South ride in Jan. Those tea estates and twisties in the Nilgiris are a treat to put the Ninja 1000 through.

Thanks a lot AKSO for your kind words! I enjoyed going through your travelogue and pictures, hope you had great fun on the twisties of the south