In October, 2021, Royal Enfield announced some big plans to celebrate its 120th anniversary. That’s a pretty big achievement, even if you’re a company and not an individual, so naturally the OEM had more than one celebratory idea up its sleeve. Painting a series of limited-edition 120th-anniversary helmets is cool, but you know what’s demonstrably cooler? The South Pole, and more specifically, riding a pair of Himalayans to it.Â
Thus, Enfield planned to set off on November 26, 2021. After acclimatizing to local conditions for a few days, the team planned to head from Novo to the Indian Research Station located on the Ross Ice Shelf. From there, riders Santhosh Vijay Kumar and Dean Coxson planned to set out on their specially-kitted Royal Enfield Himalayans on December 14, 2021. Â
How did it go? As you can imagine, communication, even via satellite, is spotty at best from Antarctica. However, the duo did manage to get sporadic messages back to Royal Enfield during the course of its trip so far. On December 20, 2021, Enfield officially announced via its YouTube channel that Kumar and Coxson achieved their goal, and successfully made it to the South pole on Himalayans!Â
Gallery: Royal Enfield 90 South
The photos you see here are from pre-event testing, and are not from the actual mission. Since Enfield knew that communication would be intermittent, but that it also wanted to keep everyone updated with what was happening with its South Pole mission, the OEM took the creative license of animating its South Pole updates. Â
Check its YouTube channel, and you’ll see a series of #90South Update videos that are very short and offer pixel-animated, bite-sized glimpses at aspects of the journey. Frequently, when the team was able to communicate with home base, those updates came in the form of short text messages—which aren’t the most visually stimulating things, you know?Â
Congratulations to Kumar, Coxson, Royal Enfield, and all the team members who managed to make this effort a success! We can’t wait to see the full story about how the trip went, once everyone is safely back home and has time to collect their thoughts.
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Source: Royal Enfield