I havent gone through enough reviews in this section so I dont know if anyone has mentioned about Unicorn’s performance under extreme stress in extreme high altitudes. Anyway here goes.
My Unicorn was 29 months and 29K kms old when I took it to Ladakh this August. I dont think I am qualified enough to talk anout all the technical details of the bike but I will mention the things that I am sure of.
- Mileage.
This was one thing that astounded me. We were doing most sections in altitudes excess of 14000 feet and had a tough time breathing. So naturally I assumed something similar would happen to my unicorn too, as I had heard incidents of other bikes(Splendour) refusing to start as the oxygen levels came down. Throughout the entire Ladakh trip, my bike gave a minimum of 48 kmpl.
- Handling and reliability
Just marvellous in all those roads(wherever we could get any road), streams, rocks and what not. Not a single instance of a flat tyre, no issues with wheel allignment, no problems with loose parts. In fact the only thing I had to do after returning was to get a bolt for the front visor(cowl) as it had fallen off somewhere. No issues with drive train either. The brakes were also very good throughout and gave us no problems.
- Comfort.
15 days and 3500 kms later my back had absolutely no pain.
- High speed riding
I dont know why I am writing this here, but just thought I wil mentiong that on the NH1(Jalandhar-Delhi), we were constantly riding at 80-85 kmph for 90 minutes at a stretch. We covered 530 kms in a day and no complaints from the bike.
- Looks
Yes. Ladakh was marvellous;)
bg