Yamaha Tenere 700 – The only bike you’ll ever need

Video Credits Motorcycle Adventure Dirtbike TV
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I recently crossed the Simpson Desert, climbing over 1100 sand dunes across 500 kilometres. I did it all on a lightweight Yamaha WR250R. A bike that weighs only 126kgs.

I had a blast, hammering it up sand dune after sand dune, refining my technique every time and trying to go harder on the bigger dunes.
But it was during this trip that I realised the lack of power. 30 horsepower just wasn’t enough, I’d be maxing out each gear, revving it as hard as I could to get to the top of the dune.

It was in this moment that I knew I needed a much more powerful bike… but one that wouldn’t add a lot of weight.

Over the years I’ve been searching for the perfect adventure bike. In the meantime I had bought the Yamaha WR250R to practice riding off road and become a better rider.

But there has always been a dilemma, if you go super lightweight for extra off road performance, the bike becomes torturous when riding it on the road. The wind pushes you around and it becomes extremely exhausting.
And riding on the main roads is a necessity if you wanna ride to some of the best trails. So through all of the research I’ve done the last few years, I thought I had some decent adventure bikes that offered the answer but they all had shortfalls.

Until I stumbled across the Tenere 700 and test rode one. I knew immediately that I had to have one, so I dropped the 20k for a fully decked out, ready for adventure, brand new Tenere 700.

The Tenere 700 comes with a high torque, parallel twin engine that produces about 70hp. While keeping the bike relatively light weight, Yamaha has literally implemented every feature that a true adventure rider would want in a bike.

From the lightweight frame, to the slim ergonomic body and seat which allow you to ride as though you’re on a dirt bike. 21 inch front and 18 inch rear tires. They’ve kept the instrument cluster basic however it shows all of the information you need. Less fancy electronics equals a more reliable bike.

When I first rode the Yamaha T700, I didn’t get to take it off road it was only for a basic test ride for about an hour, but I could feel the extremely responsive and lightweight handling and the power that it outputted was plenty and made me smile.

It has a 16 litre fuel tank that can provide a 350km range. This is just amazing for adventure riding. The tank design is slim so that it doesn’t bulk out like all of the aftermarket extended tanks do. The 14L extended tank on my WR250R looks ridiculous and interferes with the sitting position, by not being able to grip the tank properly as it’s too wide.

There are other options in this middleweight adventure bike category such as the KTM Adventure 790. Not dissing the bike, but obviously as a European bike it would be much more expensive to maintain and would not be as reliable as the T700. Also the Tenere 700 seems to provide an off road riding experience that no other larger adventure bike outside of the single cylinder category has been able to provide.

And it is for these reasons that I’m now proud to announce that I’ve ordered the Yamaha Tenere 700 and you’ll be seeing plenty of videos coming up once I receive it at the end of July.