The latest iteration of the titanium Chiru Kegeti adventure gravel bike has evolved quickly over the past few years we’ve followed it, from an oversized gravel prototype to what is now essentially a dropbar 29er mountain bike-packing hardtail. The bike started out as an ultra-endurance project for Chiru founder Pierre-Arnaud Le Magnan to race one of the toughest self-supported adventure bikepacking races, but has developed into a versatile monster gravel bike that would be as much fun shredding local singletrack as trekking far from civilization.
Chiru Kegeti adventure-ready 29er MTB or gravel bike?
We saw the earliest prototype of the Kegeti back in 2018 before it even earned its name as Pierre-Arnaud was headed to the inaugural Silk Road Mountain Race. Developed to fit bigger 700c wheel and mountain bike sized tires to handle rough off-road racing, it was essentially a scaled-up Vagus gravel bike. But in order to get the 29er MTB tire clearance and geometry needed for the Silk Road, the Kegeti needed to use a suspension corrected rigid carbon fork by the time it was ready for production last spring when we caught up with it in Taipei.
That resulting bike takes its name from the first major climb of the 1800km/1121mi race across the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. It’s what we used to call a monstercross bike, or maybe now a monstergravel bike. It’s essentially a modern hardtail mountain bike designed around a gravel dropbar handlebar.
Kegeti adventure gravel geometry
That essentially means it has modern slack for gravel geometry, and gets a slightly shorter reach & more upright stack than a modern XC hardtail would to keep a controlled position while riding in the drops. This latest update moves to longer headtubes for a comfortable, upright fit on the bike to handle technical terrain.
And of course the side benefit of having to use a suspension corrected fork is that the Kegeti becomes even more versatile. Build it up rigid for the most lightweight setup and smoother adventure racing. Or slap on a light XC or marathon mountain bike suspension fork on, and it is ready for even more technical trail riding.
But this isn’t sporting some short, reduced travel gravel fork. Instead, the Kegeti gets a proper 100mm fork. Now distributed in the US by Lindarets – the designers behind everything from the early GoatLink to a number of dropper levers and other gadgets developed with Wolf Tooth – you can spec complete bikes with a 100mm RockShox SID in order to take on the gnarliest gravel or off-road adventure racing out there.
Chiru Kegeti adventure bike Tech details
But no matter how you choose to build up the Chiru Kegeti, you are going to end up with an epic-ready titanium adventure gravel bike. The Kegeti is welded from cold-formed & butted 3/2.5 ti tubing. The 12mm thru-axle Boost-spaced mountain gravel bike gets a T47 threaded bottom bracket, internal tapered headset, and now features internal cable routing even for use with a stealth 27.2mm dropper seatpost.
The adventure gravel bike includes lots of attachment points: three sets of standard water bottle cage mounts on the main triangle, a set of top tube bento box mounts, direct bolt-on frame bag mounts under the top tube, bolt-on mounts under the downtube for additional external cable routing or bolt-on mudguards, plus standard rack & fender mounts.
It gets clearance for the biggest gravel tires your adventure should ever need – up to 700c x anything / 29×2.4″ knobbies.
Kegeti pricing & availability
The adventure-ready Chiru Kegeti gravel bike is available now in four stock frame sizes, with the option for custom geometry for an additional charge if needed. In the US, Lindarets offers frame & rigid fork sets starting at $2250, complete GRX rigid bikes from $4330, and GRX+SID builds from $4655. (The frame-only direct from Chiru will set you back 2090€ in Europe, to let you pick a fork & build to suit you.)
But Lindarets is also happy to build to suit. They say their complete package bike pricing is mostly just to give you an idea where to start. Each bike is built up to order, so whether you are looking for a bikepacking rig, gravel+, or just a dropbar XC mountain bike, they’ll get you set up for your own personal style of adventure.
