Our whole country seems to be in the middle of a marathon road infrastructure development drive and that means one can’t drive fast for most of the time. Also this is cattle country and stray villages and traffic and people and of course cattle slow you down at most points. Nevertheless team OverDrive (Sept. ’09) decided to take the Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade from Coimbatore to Pune, a distance of about 1250km in a single bound just to check if India is suited for big power bikes....

The roads for the first 150km up to Salem in Karnataka were in pretty bad shape reports team OverDrive and the Fireblade is not the right motorcycle to ride in such stretches. The suspension is simply too stiff and puts one’s wrists thru quite a workout. At low speeds these bikes are not much fun and the most important part of touring on a big bike is its ability to go fast. The Fireblade does help in easing the stress by offering C-ABS – the standard anti-lock braking system as standard fitment, even though it makes the bike even more expensive to buy.

Another area of concern is fuel. While Honda does not recommend high octane fuels for the Fireblade, these bikes run better on 97 octane. And it is difficult to get pure fuel on the various highways in India.

But it all is not as gloomy as it sounds – 75 per cent of the roads were n good shape – the rest are being made. Fuel worries should also evaporate with tighter emission norms coming.