What’s the world’s best adventure bike? A GS? An Africa Twin? According to the Aussie in the video above, he figures it’s his Honda Wave 125i!

It might sound silly at first, because he doesn’t have long-travel suspension (and it certainly doesn’t auto-lower itself at a stop sign). It’s low on horsepower, and the Wave 125i doesn’t come with heated grips, a GPS mount, a high capacity fuel tank or crash bars.

But as you can see from the video above, that doesn’t stop this guy from having adventures on his little Honda, and he’s even managed to modify this underbone bike to have most of what you really need anyway. This is a very interesting video, even if you have no desire to ever own a Honda Wave, because it shows a motorcycle that’s been modified for real-world practicality using Honda OEM parts (including parts that weren’t built for the Wave) but also DIY homemade bits, and some aftermarket kit. But no Touratech—the big ADV-focused aftermarketeers don’t make much for the underbone bike scene!

If you head to @Tomonabudget’s Facebook page, you’ll see this machine actually belongs to Thomas Kaczmarczyc, a software engineer who likes to explore the Australian Outback in his spare time, on this machine. Bold stuff indeed, but he’s not the only rider who sees the potential of these humble machines. Check out the comment from YouTuber @orical2832:

We did a 2 week tour of Switzerland/Alps on these scooters. In preparation for the weight of our gear and the big mountain passes (and me @ 100kg) I changed the front sprocket to 1 tooth smaller. Did the trick. It was still 1st gear riding at times and stopping every 5-10 mins for a few mins to let the bikes cool a bit, but they both made it up ALL the major famous mountain passes.. The bikes worked perfectly for traveling with gear. In fact it was the most fun we’d ever had bike touring. The looks from all the fancy GS and Africa twin owners at the top of the passes as they saw these two fully loaded scooters arrive and get all the attention from everyone at the top . Having small light scooters also helped a lot when we found ‘off road’ trails that were blocked etc. We simply unpacked them lifted them over the barriers and kept riding until we found an isolated/hidden spot to stealth camp. Naughty I know, but so cool. Deffo the way to get a real adventure. We also got so many people tooting as they passed us cheering us on and taking photos etc. Our little scooters served us like little champs. So much fun. I’ve owned virtually all the big ‘adventure bikes’ (GS, AT, Super Tenere etc.), But the little Honda’s were by far the most I’ve had touring. Only thing I would recommend is checking oil at the end of every long riding day and chain tension. I had to top oil several times and adjust the chain – esp after the big passes like Stelvio and St. Bernard etc.

You can get most places on these machines, even tall, steep mountains, but you’re going to get there a lot more slowly!

We’ve run stories about similar bikes before, and have seen several inmates commenting about DIY small-bore tourers they built for running around developing countries. If that’s you, and you’ve got pix, we’d love to see them in the comments below.