Renting Royal Enfield Bullet in Delhi

I doubt there are too many Estonias who might find this information useful, so I’ll write in English.

Based on Google, there are few well established players in Royal Enfield rental in Delhi, Karol Bagh. Two most recommended ones seem to be Tony’s Bullet rental and Lalli Singh I’ve also seen other formats of the name used  (Lallee, Lalliji, Lalji), but I’m guessing they all refer to same place. Both these guys were my first choice as well, but once I callled them up a day before and told that I wanted to rent a Bullet just for a weekend, I found out that 2 weeks is the minumum they’re willing to rent, especially when there’s a high season.

As I was running out of good options, I called to J.P. Manchanda owner of Mukeesh Motors. There’s a huge negative (or at least controversial) thread about Mukeesh Motors here, so obviously I had my doubts.  Even though I was not sure if  the story is true or false, I figured it’s better to avoid a place that has this kind of footprint in Internet. Then again, I wanted to drive Bullet really bad so I weighted my risks and decided to give it a try nevertheless. I phoned to Machanda and agreed to have a 350 Bullet for 3 days, 900 per day.

In person, he is not exactly a very talkative or amiable guy, but not everyone is like this and he obviously knows his stuff  being in business for so long. While I waited for my bike to be readied and papers to be prepared, there were a few local guys who came by to chat with him and he seemed much more open and trusting with those. And these guys on the other hand seemed nice and friendly to me. We have a saying in Estonian that translates to something like  “Tell me who are your friends and I’ll tell you who are you“. So, seeing that he had some trustworthy friends made me feel a lot more relaxed.

I’ve understood that in Karol Bagh, if you rent a bike fro 2 weeks, you get a price 500 rupees/day, but I’m guessing that if you want it for a weekend (with a very short prior notice) then 900 per day is not too bad. I’ve visited a couple of other (no name) workshops in Karol Bagh and they didn’t seem eager at all to rent for just a weekend, you would probably find someone, but so far I’ve figured it’s not worth the hassle.

So, depending on how good you are at negotiating and for how long you plan to rent the bike and your colour of skin ;), I’d say the price is somewhere between 500.- and 1000.- ruppees per day. Deposit fee at Mukesh motors was 10 000 rupees and once this was paid I got a copy of bike registration and insurance. I have not been stopped by police, but I’m assuming these are sufficiant together with your drivers license.

Bike ran well for 3 days and 550 kilometers, the only thing I had to to was to tighten a few screws after 2 days. There are workshops all along the roads, so it shouldn’t be a problem, even if you don’t have a repair set with you (which I didn’t).

Second time I rented from Mukesh was also a 350  Bullet, but this time I could not switch to upper gears after about 50 km of driving. I called them up and since I was not too far from Delhi, I drove back to hotel using 1st gear and waited for the guys to come and check the problem. Which they did quite quickly actually. It appeared that a small bolt was broken somewhere close to gear box and it took less than 15 min for them to fix it. Other than that, bike ran just fine and later I even managed to bargain some discount from bike pick-up fee because of this incident.

So, I can’t comment on others experience, but my experience has been quite positive with Mukesh Motors and next time I plan to take a bike from there as well.