Just to throw in my 2p of experiences. The KTM 690 Enduro can be an awesome, if pricey, adventure bike. You might need to get an additional fuel tank (google for Safari Tank) and you'll definitely need a better seat (Corbin and Renazco come to mind).

I have mine for less than a year (bought it with about 2000km on the clock) and did nearly 9000km of eastern europe with it. Rocky gravel roads in Albania, super smooth high speed highway in Hungary and everything in between.

Bike was loaded up with about 40kg of luggage in Touratech Zega Boxes and did fine. Fuel tank doubles as a subframe and that seems to work out so far. There's even some Adventure-Style windscreens on the market, although I find them unnecessary, but then my other bike is a stupidly fast naked...

KTM 690 Enduro, it's worth a look in my humble opinion.

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That x challenge looks amazing, and read your blog, fantastic times.

One thing that struck me was how unreliable the xchallenge has prooved to be.

You talkin to me?

Actually its unfair to call it unreliable. I have had a bunch of stoppages in the past month, and none before that. All the stoppages come down to one problem, the starter clutch. I can even isolate this problem to not being a fault of the bike. I recall lending the bike to a Kazakh guy to ride and hearing the starter engaged as he rode around on it. I suspect he destroyed the starter clutch, putting a lot of small metal pieces into the engine oil. This then several times resulted in enough metal particles shorting out the pick up coil (which is magnetic, thus attracting all the metal pieces in the engine).

Once diagnosed, the engine was flushed out and new oil put in, but the filter still was full of small metal pieces and I had no further oil filter. So I still havent flushed out the engine properly yet.

The engine is incredibly reliable and has got me though an insane amount of tough places, often alone where a breakdown would be intolerable. Just that the starter button was held in for one ride and that 'misuse' has resulted in the recent 'stoppages'.

50,000 km in 7 months with almost no maintenance, 20,000 of those kms were dirt. And the only problems stem from one misuse incident (and now one dodgy gasket repair). I actually think the engine has been fantastic. Arguably the best part of the bike.

Here she is on the Road of Bones:

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That story makes me a bit sick in the stomach. Especially as the bike is so heavily modified it really becomes your baby. And I can so recognize something like that.
Still pretty jealous of that bike. Pity it wasn't around when I was buying. I was told about it coming out with the spec but wouldn't have time to do the mods anyway.

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