About the Bike

How come this is an ADV blog, but it's not an ADV bike? Well, I prefer smaller and most importantly lighter bikes. Most ADV bikes are very heavy. There is a trend to making smaller and lighter bikes, but they are still quite a bit more heavy than my little Honda XR125L. It weighs about 120kg wet. Ok, it's not that powerful, but it is the most comfortable bike I own by a long stretch, good for long days in the saddle.

The bike is a 2006 Honda XR125L. The engine is a single cylinder, with carburettor fuel delivery and electronic ignition. It is very simple, pretty fuel efficient, and very reliable. The engine is taken from the Honda CG125 ES and has a few minor improvements on the original CG125 engine, which was specifically designed to be highly reliable, even with very little or poor maintenance. This engine was designed to respond to the oil starvation issues on CB engines in the early 70s. It uses a cam in block, push rod design. The inlet and exhaust cam profiles are the same, so there's only one cam lobe. The cam is gear driven too, so there's no cam chain. This was designed to be a very reliable engine.

Some more history about the CG125: https://global.honda/heritage/episodes/1975cg125.html

Personally, I think it's more to do with what you are doing with the bike and less about the bike you are using.