For a bike with the world-weary A-word in its name, I wasn’t that impressed with the 390SW rental we tried in Morocco in early 2025 (left): a naked, low-barred road bike with tubed tyres. For unsupported trail touring it was the worst of all worlds. Emerging from their their annus horribilis, for 2025 KTM have brought out a 390 Adventure X (below left) for just £5400, a higher and better sprung Adventure R for £6100, and an Enduro R trail bike for £5700 with the same R-level springs. Meanwhile the 2024 Adventures are currently being very heavily discounted from their formerly high prices and presumably, once they’re gone they’re gone.
390- Adventure X390- Adventure R390 Enduro R
MODEL
Adventure SW (2024)
Adventure (2024)
Adventure X (2025)
Adventure R (2025)
Enduro R (2025)
Weight
170kg
173
176
176
165
Tank
14.5 litres
14.5
14
14
9
Seat
855mm
855
825
870
890
Wheels
17/19
17/19 cast TL
17/19 cast TL
18/21
18/21
Suspension
170/177mm
170/177
200/200
230/230
230/230
Price UK
£5600
£5200
£5400
£6100
£5700
All data above copied from KTM UK and unverified. Both 2024 models are heavily discounted
Here we have Bob’s brand new 390Enduro R with a 9-litre tank and a 890mm (35″) seat height. It’s supposedly only 5kg lighter than an Adv SW, but has more and better suspension travel, a basic display, all costs nearly the same.
Bob’s spanking Indian-made Enduro R arrived just in time for him to run it in, sling some throwovers onto an Indian-made rack and roll it into Simon’s van. A few days later it got rolled out near the start of my new High Atlas Traverse at the Tizi n Test pass. I was on my 250 Serow (830mm seat, 9.6L tank, 139kg wet) and Simon had his over-bored 350 TTR (890 seat, 14L tank, 145kg wet).
Bob is 6′ 4″ (1.93m) so the yard-high Enduro R didn’t really bother him. I realise it’s actually the same seat height as my old 300L from two bikes ago. A only 6′ 1″ no wonder it bugged me. He brought an 11-litre fuel bag which we needed a couple of times. I seem to recall he got up to mid-70s mpg (27kpl) which gavce a pretty good 250-km range a tad better than Simon’s carb’d TTR, but way behind my Serow which got well over 100mpg a couple of times. The KTM makes twice the power of the Serow.
I had a quick spin on revised Stage N of the TMT for as long as it took Bob to needlessly fall off my Serow on a switchback. Sadly, my bike had that tendency (more here soon) so with better suspension it’s no surprise I liked the KTM more than my Serow, but not as much as Simon’s custom-barrelled 350 TTR. The masses of extra power didn’t really come into it on the trail.
Good suspension rolled over rough stuff with no deflection or correction needed by the rider, the cable clutch was much nicer, and the bike quickshifts up and down from new (no unlocking required). I found this worked better on the dirt than on the road a few days later, but by then my ankle wasn’t pivoting like it should. For once I could stand up properly, and for a KTM the seat looked hard but felt pretty good and Bob never complained (I wore – and needed – Moto Skiveez most days on the Serow). A bit of air could have been lost from the tyres for a softer ride all round. I didn’t get into the KTM on the road so much. Everything felt typically KTM-hard and Bob was often shaking out his vibration-numbed hands, though I didn’t notice this on my brief spin at <100kph. A few more miles may have changed my opinion.
If it was me, I’d probably get the bargain-priced Adventure X at £5400; it’s lower, has a bigger tank plus a screen and tubeless cast wheels. Would I soon regret the unadjustable fork, basic emulsion shock and 19-inch front over the nimble Enduro R or full spec Adventure R? We may never know, but for £6100 the full-spec Adventure R is more bike for your money if doing more challenging dirt riding and weighs 20 kilos less than my 450MT, but lacks the charismatic engine. Apart from the inner tubes, for easy trails and roads, I’d say the X marks the spot.
It didn’t take much, but my 250 Serow Touring is ready to wheel into a van and head down to Morocco for a recce of the High Atlas Traverse (left). The H.A.T is a new route I’ve cooked up to parallel our very popular, coast-to-coast Trans Morocco Trail. When the H.A.T map and tracklogs are up, they’ll be hosted on the same TMT website.
Following the Atlas watershed over the highest motorable peaks and passes for 900km, the H.A.T will probably become harder than the TMT. With elevations exceeding 12,000′, we’re not certain every planned track will be passable, but that’s why they call it a recce. Whatever happens, my lithe, low-saddled Serow ought to be ideal for the task, joined by Simon on his TTR 333 and Bob on a brand new KTM 390 Enduro R to add some Vit C to the photos. I’ll be posting the odd photo on the TMT Insta page and maybe elswhere. If it all pans out, the route will be online to download for free by the New Year.
After selling my Honda 300L, summer 2024 I was all set to buy Enfield’s new Himalayan 450, but in tubeless it cost well over £6k; 10% more than the more unusual CFMoto 450MT. so I went Chinese and didn’t regret it. I sold the MT after 8 months/7000 miles and, still Himi-curious, just got back from eight days in the Moroccan Atlas with a mate on a pair of Himalayan rentals, covering 2900km. My MT was a bit juicy for a 450cc, plus I knew at first sight its size would limit solo off-road exploration, even with the low seat height. Luckily, I did loads of that the previous winter on the 300L for my new Morocco 4 guidebook from which I span off the Trans Morocco Trail. I missed my 300’s go-anywhere ability, even if crossing Spain was a slog. Could a Him 450 pull off both? We were here to find out. I was in Morocco with Jon. We last rode together in 2003 on Desert Riders out as far as the northern Tenere’s Lost Tree.
I also owned the Him 411 a few years back and loved its ploddy thumper vibe; my sort of bike for slowly exploring trails, despite the weight being similar to the new 450. But I did get it transported to southern Spain and back which meant that like the 300L, it wasn’t a true contender as an all-round travel bike.
In a line: Economical, but heavy for what it is, we both agreed the Him was better off-road than on, but wasn’t great at either.
• Carries its mass low which results in good tracking and stability • Low seat height, and can go lower still • The economy of my 300, giving up 600km range • Stock, the minimally adjustable suspension is pretty good • Optional tubeless wheels (ours weren’t) • Feels better made– and fixed many of the 411’s shortcomings • No low-speed fuelling issues! • Stock CEAT road tyres have at least 18,000km in them (which is annoying) • Almost don’t need bar risers • Centre stand – some added weight is worth having • Tail rack and tank bars; ditto • Shock preload easy to access (but I didn’t)
• Tanked up, it’s heavy and feels it on the trail • Saddle soon gets uncomfortable • Needs softer grips • ‘Screen’ does nothing useful other than offer mounting points for something effective • Display selection is a bit tiresome, and always resets • Should an engine crash bar bend that easily?
Review There are a couple of places renting Him 450s in Marrakech now. Ours had around 15,000km and cost €65/day with worn-out stock CEAT tyres (despite me requesting good tyres in advance). So far, so Moroccan. But both bikes looked in great nick and my bike had engine crash bars. And I have to confess: what I thought was an ugly bike in late 2023 now looks pretty good, even with the naff graphics. I checked for a toolkit and was amazed to find something resembling a 1970s BMW or MZ. Everything’s there (below left), including an adaptor nut to remove the front wheel with the rear wheel wrench. What a shame the rental shop didn’t think it through and import tubeless models; I’d have happily paid more. We borrowed a rear tube, expecting to need it. With the seats off, I also noticed the height adjustment pegs on the front saddle (below right). I left mine on high which is still pretty low.
Nice tools, misterSeat height easily adjustable
One annoyance was the USB-C charging port under the handlebar mounts. I was hoping for a regular USB2/3. I suppose I might have tried to buy an adaptor in Marrakech, but luckily my Garmin runs for up to two days on a battery, so I made do. Sorry, but I didn’t waste my time trying to make the display’s Tripper mapping app work, even had my phone been Android, as it uses inadequate (for Morocco) Google Maps and can’t run offline. Lifting the bike off the side stand and turning the bars, with tank ¾ full, the front end felt incredibly heavy, and even getting it onto the centre stand took quite a heave. It was a sign of things to come. We were on our way to Anergui, about 300km to the east, tucked in a remote High Atlas valley.
On the road the Him’s brakes were fine; the rear perhaps over leveraged, but ABS sees to that. The dash was clear enough, but doesn’t save settings afaict, and unlike Jon, I didn’t bother getting to grips with it. My gear change was nothing special, the clutch a bit heavy and the screen little more than a console G-string. Jon and I were initially underwhelmed: the power-to-weigh ratio didn’t add up. We realised later we were on Eco mode which reduces power in the bottom four gears, though we were rolling along mostly in the upper two. And does 40-hp actually need softer power modes, or was it just a ‘because we can’ gimmick? On top of that, while looking wide and feeling soft, the saddle got painful after less than two hours and would remain so. Had 15,000 rental kms done the foam in? It didn’t feel like it, and had been the same on my 411 which I adapted with neoprene slabs and a Cool Cover. Shoulda brought my Skivvies. This was the only part of our ride on fast, straightish roads. Perhaps the vibration might have eased up, but with no screen and my wind catching Bell lid, I didn’t have the urge to push on beyond 100kph and hold it there. Jon was the same.
The last 40km into Anergui follows the precipitous Assif Melloul gorge (above; video below) with some big drops into the river you’d not want to attempt. Getting weary, I did overcook it a couple of times – perhaps the ABS led me astray. I even managed to poke a hole in the toe of my ageing TCX boots (left) without anything clouting the bike, far less spotting a sharp rock. I know the pegs are low, and sliding forward on the saddle points feet downwards, but this was a first for me. The wide gearing felt fine providing you kept it above 3000rpm. First was a tad tall as usual ~6-7kph @ tickover? – but clutch slipping and grunt pulled it round steep switchbacks.
Ouaouizaght to Anergui via Assif Melloul gorge
On arriving in Anergui we both decided the Him was better off-road than on, but it wasn’t great at either. The weight – 200 kilos with the 17-litre tank brimmed – is set low and combined with the low seat height made the Him stick to tracks like glue, but it still took a fair amount of effort to ride. The barely adjustable suspension felt good, especially the cartridge? forks. I could’ve backed off the rear rings a bit to reduce chattering, but neither end bottomed out during our ride. Nor did the bash plate scrape. We checked the tyre pressures, and dropped them from 36 to 30psi.
At the Anergui auberge we met up with Simon on his nicely set-up, over-bored TTR315 (left), as well as a couple of Germans on an AT and a 901 who’d both just discovered the TMT. They’d got here via TMT Stage N which had just become accessible again after months, but not without a few fall-overs. By November 2025 Stage N was rideable again. Until the next big storm. I rarely visit Morocco this late in the season, but was staggered by the size of tourist bikes used out here. Maybe they weren’t all piste bashing, but as it is, regular mountain roads are often missing the surface or capped with dried mudslides, so a giant Adv trounces a giant tourer. Old Man Norden said he was on his Last Bike Adventure, recognising he was becoming a bit of a liability. ‘Get a lighter bike!’ and give yourself another decade, we all thought. Feeling the same loss of ability, that’s what I’ve done.
On Day Two a rattle became evident under load. It had probably done it out of the shop but now unplugged, I could hear it. Jon’s bike was fine and his gear change was better too: I traced the latter down to a loose lever. It took a thread-stripping amount of cranking to close up the gap with a bit of added soap. Over the next day or two we prodded various bits to try and pin down the noise: cush drive looser than Jon’s; tightened my chain (centre stand – yay!); loose rad or crash bars? Nope. Eventually I placed the rattle under the tank and, as it didn’t get worse or affect anything, I left it. Probably like the previous customer and the next one.
Both Jon and I were amazed how well the rubbish tyres tracked on dry trails, providing we backed in appropriately. In that way the low CoG is a benefit; light bikes can feel skittish. But my new thin gloves didn’t agree with the Him’s hard plastic grips combined with the need to manhandle the 450. Weeks later I still have calluses on my palms. Along with the seat, this discomfort may have jaded our impressions of the Enfield.
Economy Having covered nearly 400km since filling up, in the Ait Boumengueze valley and with 50km range showing on the read-out, we took on a couple of litres. By the time we topped right up at the Kelaa servo next morning, I recorded 26.6kpl / 75mpg with a lot of steep and slow trails. That was already better than my MT ever managed. The next fill up after crossing Jebel Saghro off-road and recrossing back to Dades came in at 34.5 kpl or 96mpg. These match the impressive 450 figures I’d seen bandied about and add up to a potential 600km range. I read that Acerbis have produced a 24-litre tank for the Him. Why bother? The final fill-up back in Kelaa after crossing and recrossing the High Atlas was around 86mpg / 30.5kpl which was the average. This frugality was partly what had attracted me to the new Him. And unlike my CF Moto, the low-rpm fuelling was spot on, while briefly over 3000 metres – nearly 10,000′ – the loss of power was barely noticeable at the sorts of speeds we were able to ride at.
Arriving in Imilchil the next night after long road ride recrossing Saghro and the High Atlas, it sure felt nice not to have been pummelled. Is it the weight of the bike, or my advancing years? Probably the latter, as others manage fine.
My impressions waxed and waned, but in the end settled on wane. Not helped by the discomfort, the Him wasn’t fulfilling all my expectations and Jon, who rides a 690SM, was even less impressed. Even with inner tubes, I was rather hoping the Him could become my fly-in rental hack to save me running a bike in the UK, but without improving the comfort, it’s not for me – the bane of WYRIWYG rentals. Were I to own one, I’d fix the saddle, change the grips, fit an actual screen and change the shock and tyres. That’s pretty much a regular list you’d do to any bike – unless it’s a CFMoto 450MT, of course!
Still, all this grumbling didn’t stop Jon and me having a brilliant last couple of days in the High Atlas. We recce’d a new start to Stage N out of Imilchil that dodges a sometimes troublesome gully, then winged it off the map to discover a fabulous 50-km off-road crossing of the High Atlas back to the Dades valley, peaking at over 3000m. You really need to set the bike on full-power mode in this sort of terrain; the day or so we wasted in Eco we’ll never get back.
I was expecting the Him to be my sort of bike – more Trail than Adv which is the way my riding prefs are going – with better economy than the 450MT but still with enough grunt to chug around steep switchbacks. I also expected the lack of frontal bulk to make it less cushy on the road while giving an impression of greater agility on the piste. But for me, along with the discomfort, the weight just kills any benefits. The former could be fixed but the latter is largely there to stay and only increases once the bike gets outfitted for travel. Looking back at my 411 review, they’ve fixed many of the flaws and even made the 450 more economical and a lot faster on the road. Yet, perhaps because I improved my 411, as we do with all our own bikes, I think I got on with my old Him better than this rental.
It was great to have tried the Him 450 on the sort or terrain I like to ride. My replacement is waiting for me on a farm up north and is a bike I’m quite excited about. What could it be?
While scanning aerial mapping for new pistes in Morocco’s High Atlas I came across an intriguing possibility. A seemingly good track lead 25km off the N9 highway to the 2500-mTizi Telouet pass on the High Atlas watershed (31.3372, -7.2663), a few miles east of the famous Tichka pass on the N9 trans Atlas. From that point southwards the way ahead became an obliterated mule path, but picked up rideable terrain in just two kilometres, with Telouet town visible nearby. Downhill on a light bike, walking where necessary, it might be doable, no? ‘Who wants to go first?’, I quipped on Twitter.
Like the grand old Duke of York and his 10,000 men, a column of pylons marches up and over the col, bound for the massive Nour solar plant, 50km away near Ouarzazate. You’d assume some sort of vehicle crawled over the slope to erect those pylons, but no service track is evident on the south side. Still, at the very least, riding the switchbacks up to the col for a quick look should be possible.
I mentioned this recce to a mate who’ll join me out there next week. He soon found some Spanish KTM-ers behind a YT channel called Enduro Aventura. They pulled off the Tizi Telouet descent (and a whole lot more) in 2002, filmed it all and capped it off with a tracklog on Wikiloc, classified as ‘Very Difficult’. They call the Tizi Telouet ‘Collado Torretas’ or ‘tower/pylon col’? They confirm ‘the north face has been fixed with a track with a thousand curves and somewhat broken by the rain‘ but continue… ‘thesouth face on the way to Telouet is a narrow and broken trail with a lot of stones… This hill [trail] seems to be disappearing…‘. They speculate that the truncated northside track suggests a new road might get put in, but I’ve found tracks or roads often come to a dead halt at provincial boundaries, which this watershed is. The col was just an efficient direct route for the power cables from Nour to Marrakech.
Their 80-minute vid below is timed to start at the Collado Torretas stage (just a few minutes). It’s soon turns gnarly af (stills above). But scan any other random minute in their vid and you’ll see just what light and lightly-loaded KTMs (including 2T) can achieve off-road in the hands of a fit and determined crew. You’ll be staggered to see what these guys blithely ride over. Chapeau to Enduro Aventura I say! The Men who Ride like Goats. Me, I’ll take the long way round.
Fast forward to midsummer 2025, and Kriega have released a film of two guys riding over-bored, early 1980s Honda 125s on the even more sketchy Yagour Plateau, west of the Tichka pass, towards Toubkal mountain. Trust Me? Thanks, maybe I’ll pass.
Adventure Motorcycling Handbook 