Delhi Bikers

Early morning 'Breakfast Run'. Spangmik to Tangtse. From day into night. We were enthused and refreshed by our miraculous sleep, which felt more like an incredible escape from the jaws of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness). The last meal Ray had was the previous day’s lunch but he still chose to skip the breakfast. The Ladakhi drivers advised us to return to Leh instead of going to Tso Kar.  Some said it was “Bone shattering!” while others warned, “there is no road”.  We had already taken a huge risk by riding without acclimatizing and to continue further in our shaky state would have been foolish. The wild shades of the mountain could not hide the blizzard brewing behind it. Adventure motorcycling is about calculating your risks so you can keep riding. Plans are made to serve us not the other way around. Trouble starts when we stubbornly stick to an itinerary when wisdom tells us to be flexible and modify. So we headed back to Leh via Changla. I will never fo...

We should have anticipated what lay ahead in the night but maybe we convinced ourselves that sheer stubbornness could keep Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) at bay. But alas, by 5pm the temperature had dropped enough to make us immobile and stuck under our blankets and our heads were throbbing like bass woofers and no one was dancing. I asked the monk who ran the guesthouse why there were oxygen cylinders outside our rooms. “Precaution” he said. Ray had no appetite so I ate by myself. I returned to find him throwing up even the water he was trying to drink. We laughed the first few times. Then panicked, as he couldn’t stop. Neither the pink walls or the velvet blankets helped. Finally Mr. Concentration was called to the rescue. I ran and called the monk to do something. He sent a man named Dhyan Singh Thakur, the resident waiter/nurse/guide who said he could cure anything with his massage. I wasn’t going to argue and Ray was far too sick to protest as a chunk ...

Uncle Enfield nice and loaded with 54 years of stories For many of us Royal Enfield is like one of our favorite uncles who used to bring sweets and stories of adventure when we were young. But as we grew older, we realized our uncle had taken few liberties to morph his story with other more famous tales. At first you thought it was mere coincidence that his exploits sounded uncannily similar to Rambo’s. But soon reliable sources began to confirm what you had already begun to suspect, that your uncle’s imagination was fueled not by actual experience but wishful thinking. That’s the bittersweet revelation for most Enfield owners. We buy into the exotic story of adventure from a bygone era retold a thousand times, ignoring the fine print. When the ‘rubber hits the road’ one is rattled awake by an ever growing list of annoyances. Add to that shoddy R&D, poor PR, and sheer incompetence in most of the RE service centers. We believed our uncle, this war veteran, this mysti...

Here’s the bottom line right on top: You think the prize you will get is free, but it is not.  It will cost you your time, energy and most likely, your credibility. In the last couple of years, the frequency with which virtual vote gathering has taken off is phenomenal. You are promised a ‘title’ that proves you are a ‘better biker’ than all the other bikers in the country. It seems highly pretentious until you remember we are in Delhi where titles matter. A lot.   The irony is that most of us are so focused on scoring our own prizes that no one is really paying attention to others' prize.  If we did, we may see the absurdity of winning based on our ability to garner enough votes. But who cares as long as we get our 15 seconds of fame and couple of hundred ‘congrats’, ‘likes’ and ‘shares’. Usually from the same constituency who voted us in. At the end of your vote harvesting, you may also get a fancy certificate, photo-op and vouchers for your passi...

Pushing to get some air under the pony-tail - 2005 A Delhi Biker has either been to Ladakh or planning on riding to Ladakh. Interestingly there is no actual destination called Ladakh. On the way there is a Zing-Zing Bar (with no bar of any kind) and you do end up in Leh. But there is no actual place called Ladakh. It’s the name of the region and the people are called Ladakhi not Lehi. Hope you can see what’s happening. All it takes is one ride up to Leh and a Delhi Biker is an expert on Ladakh, the people, the culture, the monasteries. All dinner conversation eventually go via the Gata-Loops or More Plains and through the ‘La-La Land’. Baralacha-La, Tanglang-La, Khardung-La, Fotu-La, Zozi-La and so on. If you’re not impressed it doesn’t matter, a Delhi Biker will not stop or slow down. He has done plenty of that at the Rohtang Pass mess. Nothing like catching up with fellow bikers in the middle of nowhere On and on about the landslide, the river crossing, ...

Sticker Happy Delhi Biker at the front desk (Nepal Trip-2009)  Another factor that distinguishes a Delhi Biker from all other mortal motorcyclists is our fascination with stickers.  Not sure if this is a nationwide phenomenon but we seem to excel in the cheapest and quickest form of ‘bike-modification’. Who cares about performance, what matters is how the bike looks! So we wrap the Pulsar, Discover, Avenger, with more and more stickers until it weighs few kg’s more. Why? “Its my Style” says the one on the fender...the rest is in Punjabi  which I don't know.  But a t times I do feel as though I’ve had a full conversation with someone but all I did was read what’s plastered all over their helmet and bike. Stickers are how I display my motorcycle résumé. As bikers we can’t always be praising ourselves. I mean, once the blog is updated, the album posted, the video uploaded and the t-shirt printed…its only natural to summarize it with a sticker.  ...

My '95 Enfield's handle bars going the Israeli way. En route to Pushkar.  A Delhi Biker is usually found roaming around his second home, that is, Karol Bagh.  What Nehru Place is for video game junkies and hackers, Karol Bagh is for bikers.  Anything you want fabricated, replicated, restored or resurrected, there is always someone who knows someone who can 'help'. You can’t possibly go on an epic bike trip and not visit its glorious gali’s (streets) to stock up on more metal and chrome you logically need. One of my regular hangouts back in the day used to be Khajanchi . It was a treasure house of assorted bike accessories. That is, before it turned into a religion and split into denominations. The irony is that these shop owners must have kitted out hundreds of bikers to head out on trips, but have seldom left Delhi. In 2002-03 outside Khajanchi you would find Israeli’s who spent hours harassing Jeetu to get them a higher handle ba...

‘Hells Gift’ the one name that got the Beasters in line. That is, until July came along to rename him as ‘Dosa’ Let's be honest. If there was no Royal Beasts, chances are there would be no DBBR today. In 2003 I went to attend the GIR (Great Indian Rock concert) at the Hamsadhwani Open Air Theater, Pragati Maidan. Everyone was head-banging inside except for a wild looking bunch in the parking lot next to their Enfields. I thought they were ‘security’ since most were in combat gear. Intrigued, I went over to ask how they got their bikes inside since no one was allowed.  Bobbee ahead of his times by going back in time A very cocky looking Sardar replied “Depends what you ride dude”  I said, “I have an Enfield” He then told me how to bring my bike in.  That was my first encounter with Bobbee Singh. The next person I remember meeting was Rishi aka July. He had an impressive bike and when I asked about it he made it sound like it had parts t...