1,000km in 2 days - RE Super Meteor 650 Touring Review

Goa is important in the Super Meteor 650 story. It was there where we got to first see the bike in the flesh, during Royal Enfield Rider Mania in November 2022. Our first ride, though, came a few months later, on the smooth, arrow-straight roads outside Jaisalmer. But that was barely enough to evaluate the touring abilities of the Super Meteor 650. So, when we got an invite in early March 2023 to head down to Goa once again for TVS MotoSoul, it was the perfect opportunity to evaluate the real world touring performance of the Super Meteor.

So, I packed up all my luggage in the Rynox Navigator tail bag (and honesty, this bag performed so well it requires a story of its own), strapped it to the back of the back seat of the Super Meteor, and left Pune early morning with my colleague Ishan (who was riding the Bajaj Pulsar F250.

The first bit of the journey was an absolute breeze for the Super Meteor. The relatively smooth surface of NH48 let the bike stretch its legs as we maintained a cruise speed of 110-120kmph. And that gave me the chance to appreciate the comfort of the one-piece touring seat that’s standard on our Touring variant. The backrest too was critical in securing the tail bag and ensuring it didn’t budge an inch through the ride. And although our bike was missing its windshield, wind blast wasn’t an issue at the speeds we were doing. What was an issue however, was wind noise in my touring helmet, which did cause a fair amount of mental fatigue, and required me to slow down everytime I needed to hear what Ishan was saying over the helmet intercom.

Now rather than take the standard route to Goa (Pune - Nippani - Sawantwadi), we decided on taking a more scenic route, one that would have us crossing the Western Ghats well before crossing the border into Karnataka. So, at Umbraj, a little before Karad, Ishan and I turned off the Mumbai-Bengaluru highway and headed westward towards Chiplun. Little did we know that this decision would bite us, rather me, on the backside.

The little B-road from the main highway towards Chiplun via Kumbharli ghat was being repaired and riding over half constructed tarmac for about 40-odd kilometres was a bit of a struggle on the Super Meteor, I’m not going to lie. But still the burly RE handled it well enough without grounding anywhere and I would’ve been happy if that was the end of it.

Once we got past the turn off for Koynanagar and got into the meat of Kumbharli Ghat, things got much better. The tarmac was smooth, the road was winding and it was a tonne of fun hustling the Super Meteor through the twists and turns of the ghat. Now I would’ve imagined that the bike’s 240kg heft, raked out front and long wheelbase would’ve dampened the experience, but the Super Meteor didn’t put a foot wrong here. While it’s no corner-carver by any means, it was able to negotiate even tight hairpins with little effort, while carrying enough pace to not let Ishan riding the much sportier Pulsar feel held up. That said, a few times when he was chasing me up the ghat, he did comment that the Super Meteor’s gigantic mufflers came quite close to scraping the tarmac. But in the end, the Super Meteor reached Chiplun unscathed. It was only past Chiplun that everything I was enjoying about the bike fell apart.

NH66, the old Mumbai-Goa highway, has been under reconstruction for the better part of the last decade, and turning south from Chiplun, we realised that barely any work has been completed in the last five years. The whole highway is just littered with innumerable diversions made out of dusty broken tarmac and dirt roads. So while Ishan had absolutely no issues on the Pulsar negotiating them, the Super Meteor started struggling, having to slow down to an absolute crawl over large swathes of this “highway”. Again, the bike never ground its belly anywhere thanks to its stiff suspension setup, but that meant every bump was sent straight to my spine. With our helmet intercoms constantly connected, every wince and grunt of my agony served as background music for Ishan’s ride - something, I think he must have, no doubt, found rather amusing. It was only after 130-odd kilometres of this spine shattering highway, that things got better as the Super Meteor found the sweet release of smooth(ish) tarmac.

From Rajapur, all the way to Goa, it was smooth sailing with the Super Meteor able to stretch its legs once again. Having taken about 12 hours to cover 500km, we reached our hotel in Arpora, pain or ache free for the most part, although I feel I must have ended up a couple of millimetres shorter thanks to the spine compressing bumps. Once inside Goa though, the Super Meteor is far from the ideal bike, as turning around in the narrow gullies is quite a task. But I am grateful for the bike’s Tripper navigation pod, which made finding my way around said gullies quite easy.

The 500km journey back to Pune though, was far less dramatic as we chose a much better route that gave us plenty of smooth roads, fun twisties, gorgeous vistas and straight highways which shaved off about two hours from our travel time.

While the Super Meteor 650 got me back to Pune in one piece and high spirits, there were some lessons to be learned for taking the bike touring. As long as there are smooth open highways, the Super Meteor is an absolute champ and it serves as a great companion on twisting mountain roads as well. It’s decently frugal for a 650 too, as it returned an average efficiency of about 26kmpl throughout the journey. And it’s super comfortable, as long as you’re using the Touring seat. But broken roads are to be avoided like the plague. While it will handle them without breaking apart, the same might not be the case with your spine. But I’m willing to chalk this down to the sorry state of most of Maharashtra’s roads and if you’ve planned your route over good tarmac, the Super Meteor will be a faithful companion. Next time around for this journey though, I’m definitely taking an Adventure bike. Oh Himalayan 450, where art thou?