Motorcycle TOURING Experts Share Top Comfort & Hydration Tips

today my name is Rajiv this is my colleague uh uh and fellow rider Sovit Berry and today what we are uh sharing with you are uh our experiences of uh little comfort tips that we have learned over the years and uh uh today between Sumit and I we will be talking about our experiences in broadly three categories uh one is about rider comfort which is essential when you touring for long hours and you know hundreds and thousands of kilometers the second is of course uh the bike uh comfort which is you carry a lot of luggage there is a lot of equipment other than what you're carrying on yourself how do you make that the most comfortable experience and third of course uh is comfort and partly safety which is bike maintenance on such trips so welcome once again and like I mentioned uh let's broadly you know divide in three parts uh one is the rider comfort which is what we carry on ourselves uh for long journeys second is what we carry on the Right and third is of course how how we maintain the bike to ensure safety and comfort so let's start with pursu comfort first why don't you share with us your experiences and what you use and utilize in your lungs journeys okay Rajiv I would start off with a cooling vest first okay because you know I cannot stand heat so this is something which I bought and uh I used used it twice and it's quite good so this is what a cooling waste is looks like this okay so now what you need to do you need to soak in soak it in water for 15 minutes right in a bucket of water before wearing it you just soak it in and take it out and then after 5 minutes you need to wear it over your jacket whatever armored jacket you wear you need to wear it over that or under it also you can wear all right so so you don't wear it on your skin yeah don't wear it on your skin because uh otherwise you'll have you'll have moisture rashes correct so you wear it on the on your t-shirt over it and your jacket so how long does this uh you know cooling 6 to 8 hours 6 to 8 hours that's that's long enough right right of course and after 8 hours you you going to take a break anyhow you can again and uh use use it it's very interesting so what kind of temperatures uh does this uh you know sort of assist you in okay uh before the temperature let me tell you it is only good for dry weather okay dry heat not for your 38° of humidity you know you you can't wear in that so this is only good for dry heat okay and uh there are lot of options available in the market this is what I bought from Triumph for discount but otherwise I would have spent this much money on on this but my karate it they've got something which costs about 4,900 something and plus you know minus some discounts which any retailer would give you so uh my question to you is what is the range and how effective are they at the you know bottom end and top end see uh somewhere around 3,000 from the lowest end and goes up till 8,000 right excellent so this works in the uh summers it works in drier places and uh it seems to be an essential for people who ride 12 months in a year absolutely correct so what else do we have okay so I've got a hydration bag here so I think you can speak better on this you you see you use this one And I use a decathlon one i got the close that first okay so guys this is the hydration bag for those who don't know what a hydration bag is this is this has got a bladder inside in which you can keep a liter of water and there is a pipe here which which uh stays here on on your chest so that when when you're riding and if you're wearing a modular helmet you can you can just you know suck water from it and you need to wear it just like you you wear your backpack goes like this it's pretty simple very very affordable solution this costs about 1,600 rupees at Decathlon but of course if you if you want more capacity then you need to go in for uh slightly expensive ones like Rajiv would explain you about this OIO thing raj all your s so my experience uh I'd like to share a bit of a background i was never into carrying anything on my back because I ride a long distance and uh I always thought it's going to create a problem for me but I can show you today if somebody was to ask me what is that one thing I need to pick from the entire set of things that I carry or you know I use this will be the most important i got hoo hooked onto it firstly uh as Sumit mentioned this is a hydration pack just to give you a context um it's a very interesting uh you know mechanism that they have on this so there's a 2 L bag inside and it has got three different sets of valves so you can disconnect it at any point of time and it won't let it you know get wet inside secondly uh they have extremely uh high-end insulation inside so I have put you know water in this overnight and kept it in my uh fridge taken it out put in the morning it's lasted me for hours and hours and hours sometimes 12 hours and the water stays cold so that's a huge benefit when you're drying in hot weather uh what also happens is when you upgrade to a slightly better piece of equipment the pipes and the valves are all insulated so what happens when you're riding long distances and you're in 45° heat the first tip that you take from this almost throws you off when you're riding so it really helps when you have something a little more advanced in terms of the technology uh the valves again are very very solid in fact you can buy them separately over a period of time and keep replacing them why is it important because it's very important to stay uh hydrated in your uh trips and especially given the coh situation um when you're traveling where you going to access water you want to get whether it's worth buying and even when you're going to buy some from someplace uh is that environment good enough for you to interact with people so this has become critical for me moving on but more than that uh what really really helps me is the storage space so it has got basically three pockets i'll just show you one is a felt line pocket uh so it's almost like uh you know a jewelry box of sorts so I keep my sunglasses which are quite expensive so I I intend to keep them safe uh I keep my second mobile phone which I use because when I travel sometimes I get connection I don't so the second mobile phone stays here the first one obviously is on the mount and the other back packet is very very large if I start taking out stuff you'll be scared uh very intelligently done uh it's got a fluorescent lining so there have been lots of situations where it's been very dark in the middle of a ride where I couldn't see what I wanted to search for inside the bag this works beautifully and then there are a lot of uh small you know mesh pockets that they've created here and I can separate as you can see I've got medication here i've got sanitizer here and it's pretty deep so there are quite a few other things that go in and of course my essentials like my wallet and my you know credit cards and a lot of other things that I need to carry and easily access if you have got small cameras everything come in here and in one zip it's through the most interesting part is this has got this large little you know um flexible uh pouch of sorts and it there's a zipper at the bottom if you open it uh what they technically claim is you can fit a fullface helmet in here i haven't tried it but it works beautifully uh the best piece of technology why I love this piece is because of of course there is padding there is mesh they have created this nice little you know beam so that your back is comfortable even if you ride for 12 hours straight uh these little parts that give your back uh lower back a support but what is the most important part is there they have these you know swivel buckles so just to give you a context I hope you can see it once I put it across my chest when I'm riding and I do a lot of off-road riding and a lot of trail riding what it does is it moves with you at all the access points so there is not uh you know any discomfort or at any point of time that you feel that uh the backpack is becoming a bit of a task rather than actually giving you comfort so that's uh I can go on but that's the long and short of this so Rajie uh fundamental question how many bedrooms are there in it oh this is a 4 BHK um I'm I'm disappointed i thought more okay anyway this is called aa uh OIO it's one of the better ones in the market today uh slightly on the expensive side but it's worth the investment because it lasts you for a very very very long time how much does it cost uh this costs somewhere around 8 8 12,000 i always get a deal at discount uh but believe me it's one of the best investments I've made on my bike since I've got it so sum uh that that's about the back yeah and how we need to keep our right eye comfortable but what is even more important is our uh bum yeah so give us some tips on that okay so I've got something which is called no more numb bum it's quite funny name but it's very effective i use it for long tours i I bought it uh about 2 years ago and uh see so this is basically an air cushion it has got blisters inside in which you can fill air through a pump a pump comes with it there is a valve here so you can fill it and you can mount it on your existing uh seat rider seat and you can you can probably cover about 1,000 km without any any problem in your butt so this is very essential for me whenever I do long touring anything in excess of 300 km I use this there is one thing that people need to understand is you should not inflate it completely you know you should keep it at halfway because there are two two things one you tend to slip if it is too much filled with air second your ride height you know it increases so for a person like me I I feel pain in the neck correct you know as soon as I I get for shorter riders all touring bikes are shorter riders yes of course you know then there'll be problem managing tetoing managing the bike would be difficult for them but even for taller people you get you know even taller and then the neck will pain so you you should not go all the way with your inflation so so this seems like a very good solution but from my very limited knowledge I know there are different kinds of uh uh you know seats that we have there are air cushions there are gel cushions do you have any advice on that and uh what is the price difference that that to be there uh see this costed me about 4,500 i'm not uh much aware about the gel cushions which are available separately but yes a lot of people are getting their seats modded you know their stock seats modded or they take the leather or or that you know whatever that material is they take it off then put some more extra cushion extra cushion and put silicon pads inside so that it is easier for for riding but you know I have seen people who are not happier with that either so this is the thing so for me you know a solution like this one is you're not changing the ergonomics of your riding position and of course a lot of engineering goes from the manufacturer side uh secondly most importantly this is a very simple solution you can put it on test take it off unlike creating an entire custom seat paying you know a serious amount of money and maybe you're not happy with it and uh lastly it's a very um convenient and a very cheap solution would you agree uh not really cheap it it costs about you know in the market starts at about 2,800 rupees and goes up till 7,000 if you buy air hog or somewhere yeah so uh it's not really cheap but it is very helpful once you spend the money on it then perhaps you'll you'll thank yourself that you took that ride with us absolutely and also one piece of advice from my side that I have experienced myself I don't know about others uh when you ride in the hills this causes some problems oh because you tend to lose grip you know because it is it you mount it with some straps and it goes you know left to right so you you cannot shift your weight with that confidence you know you cannot lean properly in which which we anyway love doing right also if you are wearing rain pants you might kill yourself on this so because there's no grip this is waterproof yeah okay so when you're wearing rain pants we'll discuss rain pants later then you tend to lose a lot of grip on this then you can't you Yeah cool thank you we learned a lot moving on uh what is the next thing next item that you think okay critical to me this is the game changanger device oh yeah and very it's critical to keep it with you at all times this is the Xiaomi tire inflator thing it's easy you can you can uh uh set your uh uh PSI levels how much do you want it and once you uh fit it in on the valve it shows you the PSI existing PSI level in your tire it's as easy as this so you can send the level it cuts off automatically so it's quite nice costs about 2,300 on Xiaomi's website quite nice want to have a look no i love one of these things um as you know I do a lot of different kinds of terrain when I ride and I always have to you know change the tire pressure uh when you're off-road when you're on rock when you're on sand but the moment you come back onto tarmac you still have 300 km to tide and then what do you do you can't go searching for a you know petrol bum guy and in the back roads on you know the the rural roads you don't have a petrol bungai or somebody who's got a tire inflator so this really really helps in that in that sense u how long you have to charge this how long does it stay what's the story in my experience I have inflated about six tires with it with this okay yeah one of them was car tire okay so it's I'm quite happy yeah it's powerful enough i'm quite happy with the battery backup quite good and it has got a micro USB port so it's easier to charge it through your uh regular chargers on your motorcycle on your motorcycle on your motorcycle or a power bank or a power bank as well it's quite good you can you can keep it inside your luggage and connect it with the power bank so one I'm riding for the entire day i go into a check into a hotel or stay you know a place that I'm doing you can charge it every day every day keep it overnight and and not every day you are going to inflate yeah so it's quite good it's portable it's very small light and uh that's it and even your your children will be happy it comes with an attachment when you can inflate footballs as well footballs or basketballs so it's quite nice excellent i love this product i I perhaps I will never go on a tour without this makes sense excellent so moving forward u what else what else do we have that you need to carry so Rajie next up are the high compression socks i use it for comfort because when when you're sitting for a longer time on a motorcycle you need you know your blood circulation to be okay so I use these so would you want to explain our viewers more more about these so uh yeah absolutely my pleasure i also wear a lot of compression uh you know garments uh not just socks but beyond socks um in the summers at least my base layer is always uh you know a compression slice i I I don't have anything specific in terms of motorcycle gear but I have got Nike dry fit that I wear in the summers um it what it does uh is you know it reduces muscle cramp because muscle cramp happens for two reasons either you're fatiguing the muscle by doing or exerting it too much or fatigue sets in because you're sitting for long hours for long rides without moving and your muscle doesn't flex so get exercise so it's starts cramping again a compression garl basically helps you to relax uh your muscles and makes it comfortable on longer rides the other thing it does is um if you go for the high end a good garment will keep keep you cool in the summers by absorbing your sweat and making it ventilated but in the winters it'll actually provide you warm so this actually makes a lot of sense the socks uh you know if you if you want to get trousers I wear these kind of trousers and they become very very uncomfortable especially in the summers so I keep a base layer of you know slacks and and a t-shirt so incredible stuff what is the price range or something like that these cost about 400 rupees excellent good investment yep very good in fact next one sir so let's talk about rain pants okay so Rajie I normally don't ride much in rain but you know sometimes you don't get to predict the weather and you're in the mountains or anywhere you know it rains so I always keep that in my keep this in my luggage so you can wear it over your regular pants you know so that whenever it pours you are dry no problem at all and it has got a zipper here so you can wear it over your boots as well and it's got some amount of elastic also so you can wear it over the boot and zip it down right it's stays tight so even your your feet are protected so I noticed this is from Ka so this is not specific to uh you know motorcycle so so what this really does for us riders is it gives us two levels of protection uh the way you would typically use a windchet uh it protects you from wind cold air blast when you're riding especially in the winters up north uh and it also protects you from any kind of you know uh water be it rain or you're driving through a riding through a you know river crossing it comes of extreme use uh what I love most about this is if you go for a complete waterproof motorcycle riding pan it costs you a bomb all you need to do is uh buy a normal standard set of riding pants which are comfortable for you which give you safety at the you know key places and if you just slip this on over it uh as a combination they have worth tens of thousands of rupees worth of waterproof got this cost only 699 we are cheap okay so ST u when you get up in the morning and you have a long day ahead of riding I would presume you start with some kind of an under layer depending upon the weather or the terrain that you're riding on yes I do i use a set of base layers i'll show you the top and the bottom so this is what I use now this is the bottom it is very snug it stays you know in very very tight with your skin right and uh it's warm it has got f lining inside right and uh in extreme cold like when you're riding in fog or or you know 4° or 5° in the morning it's quite helpful you can wear it under your pants and also you know this this does the similar job and it keeps you know air from entering from your wrists you know it's it's that tight so they also call it a skin right you know it's quite handy for winters and I wear normal t-shirt above it and my regular winter jacket right you know in my experience uh one is the weather part of it of course you can always invest in expensive jackets and pants and so on and so forth but for me this is a very critical comfort garment So as of right now if you see uh I have a base layer under this I have a base layer under this uh my experience is when you start wearing these kind of trousers and jackets uh they're very rough in terms of texture because they're meant to do a job they're abrasion proof and so on and so correct so initially when I used to wear this every ride I used to come back with a sore patch on my and the moment I started wearing these base layers my level of comfort grew so therefore I was riding further i was feeling more comfortable and I was riding more uh safer because there was no discomfort in my in my mind so it plays a very very large role too correct so what are we moving on to next okay so we will talk about the liners you know for the glove right you know there are people who don't have or don't want to buy different sets of gloves for different weathers so this works really well with your mid-season gloves like you yourself use alpine stars out dry I believe yeah so if you wear these under your mid-season gloves so you are ready for the winter i used it last year on my Rajasthan prep it was quite cold and I was doing well with these it was quite nice it is made of marino wool very thin doesn't cause you any discomfort the only thing is you know after 3 four uh 3 4 hours of riding it's seam must you know it may hurt your fingertips but uh somebody told me a hack this morning that you can you can wear it the other other way yeah you just reverse it and wear it so that your seam is outside so Raji would you just demonstrate for our viewers here how how to wear this under your glove okay so let me do one better yeah so these are the gloves that I normally use uh they are completely waterproof because if it's raining it becomes very important to have a pair of gloves uh which is comfortable and if your fingers don't work then it becomes a problem um and it's a full gauntlet right so it keeps you safe from all kinds of weather elements but the problem that I had with this was uh the moment winter set in uh it's not comfortable uh I can tell you winter's in the north it doesn't work at all and if you go to the hills your your fingers your tips will start freezing so badly here so I thought I'll buy a winter glove and then I realized winter gloves cost you a bob so what I did was I all I did was and as you can see I just added this liner it's inside it's pretty much like what um someone shared with us this I bought from Decathlot for some on discount for some 350 400 bucks so it makes this glove with this worth some 16 18,000 rupee glove and it works wonderfully and the convenience is if uh if I'm riding and I come down back into the planes and it won't all I need to do is pull this out works wonderfully absolutely so moving on so let's talk about the neck warmer you're already wearing it so y so let's explain you you do it okay so uh what I experience every time when I'm riding especially in the winters um is that uh I have a very expensive helmet i have a few some of them are expensive the helmet ends here there is uh always a chin uh you know uh strap of sorts in the high-end ones but they don't deflect the air that oft you know expensive jackets they end right here so when you're riding at you know high speeds in a cold climate this place can make you singularly mostable absolutely so that's why I invested in something like this again this is from Decathlon it's not terribly expensive 160 bucks if I remember correctly the good thing about it is unlike a standard muffler or a scarf that you put around your face this has this nice little you know equipment where you can press it and pull it and you can tighten it so in a ride especially when I'm putting this on every time I put my helmet this comes out so this little mechanism uh helps you keep it in place and uh not let it bother you uh but most importantly what it does for me in today's time is that uh because of the co restrictions all I need to do is to cover my face and it works fabulously so I mentioned about the fact that I've wor lots of helmets and there are various kinds of you know eye protection that I get with each different helmet but what I realized is some of the high-end helmets don't give you the dark black you know the secondary visor yeah cuz I I would presume they feel it's not safe enough right but uh when you're riding long distances a person like me finds it extremely inconvenient because the level of sun since the morning till mid afternoon changes dramatically correct and uh I can't keep changing my sunglasses keep putting it on and I don't have the visor do you have a solution for that uh yes I I have these these are called uh clip-on glasses which you can wear over your existing spectacles let me say yeah these are yellow but they also come in dark shade basically for the day and yellow ones can be used for the night so this seems to be very convenient does this come in a set of different colors or do you buy one uh you can you can buy different ones you can buy the dark one one at a time of course okay how much does something like this cost about 500 rupees that's extremely uh you know yeah and again for that matter and again you can buy these from the the cheapest glasses you buy with lenses cost you at least a few thousands and they're really expensive or can go into lags for that matter it's a very very good investment I think and uh now that we are talking about sunglasses and clipons you know what I do i buy a cheap pair of uh sunglasses which I use only for a particular tour cost about 350 rupees or 400 rupees from Decathlon they are UV protected does the job very well because when you are on a motorcycle tour you tend to scratch your sunglasses way too often right right so at that time if you're wearing something expensive like an Oakley or something then you you'll curse yourself so I use those you know I use it once and then I throw them off it's quite thankful so ladies and gentlemen the lesson to be learned here is that somebody who has got all this stuff also looks at uh you know uh the price sensitivity once in a while so the you know ease of access becomes very very critical for a few things we discussed about the hydration factor i showed you that you know there are certain compartments there but for you know weekend rides or breakfast rides or my breakfast rides end up being 300 and 400 kilm because anyway but every time I don't want to carry something on my back or put something you know in my top box is there a more simple and more convenient solution for something like that something like my wallet and my bike papers a hand sanitizer these stuff like that yeah uh like Rajiv last week you told me that you don't like wearing long touring jackets with pockets i find them pretty useful for people like you who don't like wearing longer jackets you know there is a waist pouch that I have here see wonderful so yeah so you can wear it as the name says waist pouch you can wear it around your waist and you have easy access of all the things that you want oh wonderful so this this is from I think Vera this looks very interesting this is obviously adjustable and there seems to be a single patterning you know mechanism lock so when you're sitting and you can just pull this and make it fit to your waist that's quite good it's very very convenient uh seems to be safe and robust this is this is the reverse tanniny pack right so you have a mesh pocket here you can keep stuff like your phone and your glasses thing that you need easy access to and there are two fairly large compartments inside in case you want to keep your bike papers and your wallet and your phone and other things inside very very convenient if you don't want to carry a bag or you know anything big with you so that's one good thing so since we are reducing the quantum of luggage from backpack we came to you know waist pack but sometimes I'm just going to a friend's house like I rode down to your place today i don't want to carry anything what do I have so I have my keys and my little you know little flashlight and I have my um basic small pen knife that I carry and stuff like that i'm sure you have a solution for that too of course I use this and uh there's a carabiner key holder you know you can you can hook it up on your jacket i use it for other purposes as well like I always carry two keys with me when whenever I'm touring I keep the duplicate key also so I keep one key in my uh the upper pocket that stays in my jacket always and the uh for for my main key I use this i hook it up on my jacket and uh whenever I'm taking a break or something I take the key off and hang it here so that I don't have to look for pockets you know look for my keys in my pockets makes sense yeah it's very helpful small device not small tool it's quite good so it's actually beyond the you know immediate convenience what I use this for not not this one but something a little bigger and sturdier um I've actually towed uh bikes and jeeps with a carabiner because what happens is um you have a tow strap the tow strap typically doesn't have a hook at the at the end so there's a loop at the end and uh there has been have been times when I didn't carry a tow hook and that's when something like this just came into play and instead of you know tying and knotting a strap around the the front of the bike you can just put the loop inside and keep it put it on a hook and that's how it works so multi-purpose and very very useful and also guys uh there are some brands who are making it with the combination lock as well correct so they can you can use it for locking things also so thank you for sharing all your equipment and all your experience we really appreciate it but what I would like to add is always try and take a cap with you because when you're not riding and you're out in the summers this little piece of equipment helps you in a lot of situations and it looks good right but having said that uh uh there's a sea of equipment and we can't carry everything at all points of time and I'm sure some of our younger viewers and riders uh they do not have the luxury of investing in so many things uh immediately if I was to ask you to point out one or two critical things that you believe you can't live without on a ride what would those two things be okay uh I would pick the air cushion okay one and the where is this the entire inflator wonderful for my tours I I I won't leave without these two things so one becomes comfort the other becomes safety absolutely both together are of course convenience absolutely makes tremendous sense what would you choose Rajie any two things so uh what I would uh definitely not uh go without is my hydration pack because if there's no fuel in the tank and there's no water in my body then I have a huge issue And like I said some time back this is uh become critical to my riding experience um what I use this for is to carry everything that I need so you know it's my it's my safety bag so to say uh I I can pretty much go out for days together uh with absolutely nothing but bare essentials in this bag and and my bottle of uh water the other thing uh that I could not ride without anymore these days uh entertainment convenience and safety is my Bluetooth headset so what I would recommend is ladies and gentlemen uh we have a very extensive uh Bluetooth uh com uh episode as well so please check out our uh Bluetooth com sets uh episode right here on the link and I'm sure you'll uh enjoy it a lot as well so uh I hope you enjoyed the little you know episode that we've put together this is our personal experience uh for uh decades uh and decades put together and uh hundreds and thousands of kilometers this is in no uh means a recommendation of any specific gear or any specific brand this is purely our experience and our intention to share uh whatever little knowledge and wisdom that we have gained over the years so with that uh uh I'm sure Mr bry has a lot more uh information uh in his uh you know bank if you want to ask us more or if you have

2025-04-15 04:35

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