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| "1901" is the name of a new magazine devoted to Royal Enfield. |
Named "1901" for the first year Royal Enfield built motorcycles, a slick new magazine seeks to promote the brand while exciting "riders who live by just one code — the motorcycling way of life."
Volume 01, 2026 is online now, and it is impressive for its high quality photos and interesting stories.
It describes itself as "First published in India by HarperVintage 2026, an imprint of HaperCollins Publishers."
Copyright is held by six individuals. Beyond that, it's a bit coy, explaining:
"These are stories about motorcycling and experiences it enables the riders to live.
"The fact that the machines are all Royal Enfields, well that is just a happy coincidence. Or is it?"
Well, maybe not, since the publication is featured on the RoyalEnfield.com website.
Online, 1901 looks and "turns pages" like a glossy print magazine. The copyright page states that it is "Printed and bound at Thomson Press (India) Ltd." That suggests it is a physical magazine, but no "cover price" or subscription information appears.
Online, the magazine format means the photographs are lush and lavishly display. But I had to constantly zoom in to read the type. Obviously, this gets annoying.
The nine stories in Volume 01 are:
The Last Degree — Santhosh Vijay's account of motorcycling to the South Pole.
Custom Act — Norman Fields' description of a vintage custom show bike built around a Royal Enfield iron barrel motor.
Chasing the Buddha — Santosh Vijay dares to penetrate the Tibetan plateau against all the rules.
Factory Reset — Kartik Ware enters Royal Enfield's first factory in India, built in 1955 in Chennai.
Peak Valley — Santhosh Vijay on experiencing the Mustang Valley of Nepal for the first, but not the last time.
The Last Potters of Likir — Clifton Shipway visits the vanishing practitioners of a thousand-year-old craft.
Easy on the Ice — Louis Rudd crosses the Ladakh region of the Himalayas in winter, when the road is closed.
Story of My Life — Kartik Ware fulfills his father's dream of riding his 1975 Bullet back to the factory where it was built.
The Bike Bandit — Rishad Saam Mehta on escaping from a mountain man who demanded to have his Bullet.
It's all fun reading. As you see, life changing adventures in the high mountains dominate. The magazine is aimed at an audience in India, and at one point it presents several lines of untranslated Hindi. (You'll get the drift, in context.)
Ironically, for a magazine devoted to a brand of motorcycle, the South Pole episode highlights the quote "I'd never been so glad to not ride a motorcycle in my life."
The Story of My Life article lingers long on how unreliable the old Royal Enfield Bullets were. As usual, in tales of travel by Royal Enfield, this disaster prone tendency is treated as somehow endearing.
You would not find this in a magazine devoted to Honda.
The last "page" closes the book with the Royal Enfield cannon logo — probably not a coincidence.
Will there be a Volume 02? When? Next month? Next quarter? Next year? This is not revealed.
So don't wait. Go read "1901," or, at least, feast your eyes on the gorgeous photos it contains.
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