They’re in the thousands. They are everywhere in the big cities in Southeast Asia. Hanoi, Bangkok, Saigon, Colombo are full of them. I’m talking about scooters. Small, automatic, practical: Honda Click, Yamaha NMAX, TVS Ntorq. You see the occasional larger bike, but it is the exception. Traffic moves in a stream of 125cc commuters, weaving and accelerating, everyone going more or less the same speed. Motorcycling as transportation, not identity.
India is different. Yes, the scooters are here too, plenty of them, but alongside them you see real motorcycles in numbers you don’t see elsewhere in the region. And a disproportionate number of them are the same brand: Royal Enfield. The long fuel tank, the high handlebars, the unhurried single-cylinder thump you hear half a block before the bike comes into view.
On the ground floor of my homestay in Kochi there was a motorcycle rental and repair shop. Outside on the street there was a mechanic working on a half disassembled motorcycle. What type? Royal Enfield. I recognized the brand from the olden days, but in recent years I hadn’t heard about it or seen any Royal Enfield motorcycles. But here in India they are everywhere. How come?
The reason goes back to 1955. The Indian government, looking for a motorcycle rugged enough for Army and police use on the subcontinent’s roads, licensed the Bullet 350 from Royal Enfield in Redditch, England. The Madras factory started assembly that year, and the bike proved exactly what the military needed: simple enough to fix in the field, heavy enough to handle bad roads, reliable enough to keep running. The Army adopted it in large numbers for patrol work in the Himalayas and along the borders.
The British parent company collapsed in the 1970s, unable to compete with the Japanese manufacturers flooding the market in Europe. The Indian operation survived. It kept building essentially the same motorcycle, the same pushrod engine, the same basic architecture, long after it would have been retired anywhere else. In a country with limited spare parts distribution and mechanics trained on specific engines, that consistency was an advantage.
By the time India’s economy opened up in the 1990s and disposable income started rising, Royal Enfield had something no competitor could buy: forty years of association with a particular kind of Indian identity. Tough. Self-reliant. Built for the real country, not the highways. The bike became the default choice for anyone who wanted to ride from Delhi to Ladakh, or along the coast of Kerala, or up into the Western Ghats. There is an entire touring culture built around it.
Today the lineup has expanded well beyond the original Bullet. The Himalayan is their adventure tourer, popular with overlanders. The Meteor 350 is a relaxed cruiser. The Continental GT is styled as a cafe racer. But the Classic 350 is still what you see most often on the road: the same silhouette, the same sound, starting at around 180,000 rupees and available in every city and most large towns.
The network matters. A Royal Enfield dealership and a mechanic who knows the engine can be found almost anywhere in India. That is not true of most competitors.
Simple bikes that last. Not a bad formula.
India and Sri Lanka 2026 — all posts
- Day 1 — 24 Hours to Mumbai
- Day 2 — First Morning in Mumbai
- Day 3 — Exploring Mumbai
- Dhobi Ghat: Mumbai’s Laundromat
- Day 4 — Sightseeing in Colombo: One Day is Enough
- A Short History of Ceylon
- Day 5 — Kandy: Moving into the Mountains
- Day 6 — Moving on to Ella
- Day 7 — Hike and Sunstroke
- Tea in Sri Lanka: From a Blight in 1869 to Four Million Cups a Day
- Day 8 — Nine Arches Bridge
- Day 9 — Tuktuk Tour Around Ella
- Day 10 — Time to Leave Ella
- Orphans of Udawalawe: Inside Sri Lanka’s Elephant Transit Home
- Day 11 — Safari and Galle Fort
- Day 12 — Onwards to Negombo for the last day in Sri Lanka
- Day 13 — All the problems concentrated on a single day
- Royal Enfield: Why India Rides Different
- Day 14 — The Kerala Backwaters
- Day 15 — Local bus to Munnar
- Leyland, a familiar name from the past
- Buying a beer in Kerala: Local knowledge required
- Mahindra: The Jeep That Never Left