“Back to try and win the Original by Motul class”

Coming from a motorcycle racing family - his dad ran race teams - Charan grew up at the track and started racing at 16. Twelve years of hard graft later it all came together in 2021 when he signed for KTM South Africa and won the country’s prestigious National Cross Country Championship. With the likes of Hero factory rider and friend Ross Branch making such an impact in rally-raid it was only natural that Charan’s attentions turned towards the Dakar and after a promising debut on the Kalahari Rally, he signed up for the 2022 edition in the unassisted ‘Original by Motul’ class. Definitely not the easy option, but despite ‘riding to finish’ and very little rally-raid experience Charan ended up just off the podium in fourth place. Now he’s back and kows what to expect he’s looking to win the prestigious category second time out.

“I was pretty happy with how everything went last year. I lost a lot of time the first few days just trying to figure everything out and I was always focusing on the finish, never actually racing, so given all that the final result wasn’t too bad. Now I’m going back to win. In terms of fitness and organisation I wasn’t too bad last year but I’d only ever ridden 5 road books and so navigation wasn’t my strong point. Since then I’ve been training with Ross Branch and some other South African mates and that’s really helped. We each make road books and then share them and now I must have ridden 50 or 60 different routes. I think that will make a big difference.”