Adventure touring may be a term unfamiliar to those of you who don’t ride. For us enthusiasts, it’s a somewhat ambiguous and over used term. Generally, it refers to long distance travel to remote or exotic places or simply taking the road less traveled. Often the roads may be unpaved and sometimes no roads at all. Many of us camp as well because it adds to the adventure experience and allows you to stay in remote places (and partly because we’re cheap).
BMW popularized this touring category with the introduction of the 1980 R80G/S. The GS line has been wildly successful and other makes eventually followed suit. Adventure bikes are now the industry leader in sales. Adventure touring got a big boost in 2007 when actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman took off on a around the world trip on BMWs with a documentary film crew in tow. Long Way Round was very successful and was followed a few years later by the duo teaming up to ride from England to the tip of Africa in Long Way Down (https://www.longwayround.com/). Now, there are quite few people traveling the world on motorcycles. Many have sold their homes and worldly possessions and started traveling full time. Simon and Lisa Thomas have been on the road for 16 years now (https://2ridetheworld.com/rider-profiles-lisa-simon-thomas).
Honestly though, people have been doing this since the production of the first motorcycle. The first recorded cross country trip occurred in 1903, San Francisco to New York. The Hotchkiss sisters were the first women to complete a Transcontinental trip alone in 1915 with a Harley and sidecar.
And any bike can be an adventure tourer, although some are better suited to it than others. They run the gambit from street-legal dirtbikes with luggage strapped on, to the large predominantly street bikes popular today. I guess you could call adventure bikes the SUVs of the motorcycle world. The Tiger and the V-STROM are primarily road bikes but they do have the ground clearance to get off the beaten path a bit. What makes this type of bike so appealing is that they typically do everything well and with comfort. Upright seating, wide bars, leg room, carrying capacity (my Tiger has more carrying capacity in both volume and weight than the current Honda Goldwing), they’re tall but light, can spend the day at 80+ on the interstate, run with the sport bikes in the twisties, and still go down the dirt road and across the creek to a remote campsite.
TigerTracks 