Our correspondent takes Royal Enfield’s new Thunderbird Twinspark for a spin in the hills
IT WAS a bit foggy when I hit the GT Karnal Bypass for the test ride of the Thunderbird Twinspark. The traffic was sparse and I managed a decent 70-80 kmph. Normally, the first thing to look out for when you ride a Royal Enfield, which has a brake pedal on the right hand side, is the rear brake. With the pedal on the right and the rear brake assembly on the left, the effective braking leverage gets reduced a bit.

But with the Twinspark, things are very different. The entire brake assembly and the chain drive have been shifted to the right to give it more bite and confidence to the rider, though it leaves the left side of the bike almost naked.
As visibility improved, I couldn’t resist the temptation to rev hard. The milestones vanished in fleeting glances as I thundered down NH-1, the speedometer needle touching the 120 kmph mark over the Panipat flyover. The riding time from Karnal Bypass outside Delhi to Kiratpur near Chandigarh was a little over three hours, but I was eager to hit the hills to feel the taste of the enhanced pick-up.

From Parwanoo, the shortcut to Kasauli was extremely narrow, and at places there was no road at all. The suspension ate up the potholes as the bike lurched forward, the new-gen engine generating the extra 2 bhp over its predecessor (18 bhp). The soft seat and the spring-mounted retractable foot-pegs only made the ride more comfortable. The best thing was that sudden deceleration from 60 to 30 kmph never required a shifting down of the gears. The bike pranced forward, ever-obediently, with a twist of the throttle.

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