Viaterra Kruger - Full Gauntlet Gloves For Long Rides

Riding gloves, as important as their role is in safety, are among the most ignored pieces of motorcycle gear. It’s a simple fact that whenever you fall, your hands are usually the first to come in contact with the ground. While many different kinds of riding gloves are available in the market, the safest are a pair of gauntlets. We received the latest Viaterra Kruger touring gauntlet gloves and what better way to test them than a ride to Upper Mustang in Nepal! 

The Purpose 

I have owned the Viaterra Grid gloves for over a year and I am a big fan; you can read the review here. While the Grid is more of a sports tourer/track glove, the Kruger is a proper touring glove. It can be easily made out from the fact that Viaterra’s focus was to make it lighter and offer the rider more feedback. Hence it’s crafted from a combination of goat skin leather and mesh fabric.

The Fit

While the protection offered by a glove is critical, comfort matters a lot too, especially for a touring glove. Normally it takes me a couple of days of riding to break in a new pair of gloves, but with the Kruger it took me just one ride. The stretchable mesh panels mean the gloves easily conform to the shape of your hands, and they’re very accommodating. Also, the feel from the gloves is great as it isn’t an all-leather construction, allowing for wonderful feedback through the handlebar and levers. Another benefit of the leather-mesh construction is that the gloves dry up quickly if they get wet.

The Protection

And when it comes to protection, Viaterra has you covered with the Kruger. The goat skin leather should offer abrasion resistance from the get-go. You also get CE  Level 2 knuckle protection, and the key highlight of the Kruger is that it employs SuperFabric (a combination of nylon or polyester, superimposed on hard plates) which looks like a normal fibre but is claimed to be 10 times stronger than even Kevlar! 

It has been used on the scaphoid, wrist and the pinky finger, the most critical areas in the event of a crash. Viateera opted for these – instead of the Knox sliders seen on the Grid – to make the Kruger more flexible and offer better dexterity to the rider. Luckily, I didn’t crash during the ride, so I haven’t tested the claims of the SuperFabric. But if it turns out to be as effective as the Knox palm slider (which performed brilliantly in a crash), then it could be a gamechanger in terms of protection.

Should you buy it?

Honestly, it’s hard to fault the Kruger, but it would have been great if Viaterra offered a waterproof variant, as my hands were freezing cold while in the Himalayas. Besides, I always prefer function over form, that isn’t the case for everyone and the aesthetics or the colour combinations could have been better. Also, the touchscreen panel on the index finger didn’t perform consistently,  so I had to keep taking off the gloves, which got irritating after a while. 

Priced at Rs 5,699, the Viaterra Kruger offers you fantastic value for the kind of protection it offers. The mesh panels, which made my fingers go numb as we closed in on Upper Mustang, were a boon when we were riding in the sweltering heat. The best part of the Kruger, for me, is the comfort it offers and how light and easy it feels while riding. So, if you're on the hunt for a good pair of full gauntlet touring gloves, and would generally be riding in warm to cool weather, the Viaterra Kruger makes a lot of sense.