Page 73 - SHARP September 2022

scramblers. Many of the bikes are modern but look vaguely like old 1980s Paris–Dakar rally bikes with bulbous tanks and tall sus- pension, or like the Californian desert-sleds seen in Bruce Brown’s 1971 documentary On Any Sunday. Rodríguez paints many of the motorcycles by hand.
It would be easier, of course, to spend $20,000 on a high-tech Transformers-esque BMW R 1250 GS or a fully loaded KTM 890, machines tailor-made for a 1,400 km rip across Morocco. But to take that shortcut would miss the point of La Ruta.
“We couldn’t find an event that united our other passions, our idea of aesthetics and lifestyle,” Thierry Philippe wrote to me through Rodríguez. And so, a few years ago, he got a group of riders together and started this. The first running of La Ruta took place in southern Europe due to travel restrictions. The first “real” running was in 2021, in the Sahara desert.
This past summer, La Ruta del Nabab went back to Morocco for an eight-day trip. It started in Marrakesh, crossing over the Atlas Mountains and heading southwest toward the expansive beaches along the Atlantic coast before looping inland though the desert and back up to Marrakesh. In addition to the 21 riders — which
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included Thierry Philippe and his son, ex–Indy Car racer Nelson Philippe — were another 10 or so support staff including mechanics, photographers, and a medical team.
“On other adventures, when they stop due to a breakdown, they lose time and it is negative. Here, we have the time and the power to enjoy every second,” wrote Philippe. It’s not a race. Nobody takes a GPS with the route mapped out, and riders help each other. Participants come from France, Spain, Portugal, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Germany, America, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa, and elsewhere.
“On this beautiful journey, we move as a group. We dance under the stars, we share a look, a smile, a drink in the middle of the desert,” says Philippe. “There is joy, and that’s what we don’t want to lose.”
It genuinely looks like fun, like maybe this is the path to mo- torcycle nirvana. The vibe is meticulously curated, which is the reason anyone can’t simply go online and join the next Ruta del Nabab — but, if you could, it would cost around €4,000. There’s the catch: two-wheeled nirvana doesn’t come cheap.
“It is a journey open to all those who share our spirit,” wrote Rodríguez. “If someone considers himself a person with high purchas- ing power, open to sharing and helping others, if you are an aesthete, an adventurer who enjoys the beauty of the road, the mystique of this trip, you can contact us, of course.”
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