Kshitij Saxena: the best journey not the best motorcycle | 30 countries | What Drives Me | evo India

Kshitij Saxena has ridden motorcycles in more than 30 countries. He rode South America solo for four months on a used third-hand Yamaha Tenere 700, covering 25,000 kilometres across 67 riding days. He woke up at 3:45am in Chile to ride 90 kilometres in -11 degree cold to reach a geothermally active volcanic field at sunrise. In this special India Bike Week edition of What Drives Me, Kshitij Saxena — Indian adventure motorcycle rider based in the Netherlands — sits down with evo India at IBW to talk about what actually drives him. And it is not the motorcycle. The motorcycle, he says, is just the thing that puts him closest to himself. It is where he questions his existence, figures out who he is, and thinks two hours down the road without realising time has passed. The Yamaha Tenere 700 he rides is a third-hand bike he bought on a budget. He talks about the South America solo motorcycle ride that was originally planned as a two-year Alaska-to-Argentina journey — until one night changed everything. He talks about standing at the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina and thinking that a piece of his heart would always be buried beneath that cold sheet of ice. He talks about why numbers and kilometres do not fascinate him, why Indian riders need to learn to use a spanner before they think about gear, and why the biggest cultural difference between a motorcycle enthusiast in the Netherlands and one in India comes down to two things — safety and DIY. He also talks about his son Riyad, and the single question that drives everything Kshitij Saxena does on every ride and every journey — what kind of world am I going to leave for my child? What am I going to say to him when he looks me in the eye and asks what I did about it? #evoIndia Want more #ThrillOfDriving videos? Subscribe to the evo India channel: https://bit.ly/2VfzioP Read our stories here: https://evoindia.com/ Buy #EvoIndiamagazine here: www.evoindia.com/magazine Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evoindia/ Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/evoindia/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/evoindia Official merchandise on 100kmph: http://www.100kmph.com/evoindia