The original Royal Enfield Himalayan adventure-tourer turns eight years old this year, and it's been cycled out of currency, which means you can pick one up for a pretty affordable price.
In the case of the example shown here, offered by Spenders Motorcycles, you can get a Royal Enfield Himalayan for just £2,699, and before you think that must mean it’s done 18 laps of the Earth, it’s actually only done 1,979 miles, which is less than one-tenth of the way around the Earth, and it’s done all of those miles with one owner.
The Royal Enfield Himalayan 450 that launched last year brought more power and more performance to the Himalayan package. But it was only able to do so because of the commercial success of the original, whose absolute simplicity was a major factor in its success. Certainly, it is telling that, despite a raft of new models from the same-engined Royal Enfield Scram 411 to the cruising middleweight Super Meteor 650, the 24bhp Himalayan remained Royal Enfield's most recognisable model.
So popular, in fact, was the old air-cooled, 411c, conventionally-forked Himalayan that, even now, Honda seems to be plotting a rival to, or replacement of, it - even though Enfield itself has moved on.
The aforementioned popular simplicity of the Himalayan drifted slightly with the model shown here, which has ABS, but it’s hard to bemoan such a feature on the oft-wetted, ever-neglected roads of the UK.
Other features include a rear rack and grab rails, a front screen, crash protection around the front of the bike and the handlebars.
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