Reverse Gear - Lets go back in time!!
Daman Sidhu

Hi! Welcome to the club. I've tried to pen down the events in the club as I recollect them so this is a small narration from my perspective as the years have gone by and well all have nurtured this baby of a club to the biggest motorcycle club in India. If you are an existing member you will love to read the whole writeup, if you a new member or don't know us personally you may not be able to relate to the people in particular, but you would still be able to enjoy the whole history.

In the year 2001,after years of trying to convince my parents(they of course didnt agree) I managed to save enough on my own to take a loan and buy a brand new Royal Enfield 350 Machismo. I was really proud of my new baby and the feeling one gets with a new bike is hard to beat.. the smells and sights are intoxicating! I used to shine her day in and out. Whenever i parked her anywhere I had to clean her..Being a Royal Enfield owner i obviously started doing some small rides around Bombay whenever i used to get a chance. Most of these were with Sunny (my cousin who is in the club too now). Thirsting for more rides and company I searched for and found a Bombay Bullet Club made by a person called Kunal on the Times of India website.. 2 more members of that club were Hanif and Ravi Soni.. I wrote to all 3 of them, Ravi and Hanif mailed me back and I pestered them to go on a ride, but nothing materialized.The club itself never materialized into anything and was forgotten. One day Ravi and me decided to meet at SV road at Ravi the mechanic's garage. When I met Ravi there he said he'll call another bulleteer he knows who stays close by - and in a few moments I met a guy called Rasik. He had a shiny standard Bullet which had very wierd handlebars(aka easy rider) and the indicators mounted on the handlebar. He smoked and we talked. Being whimsical like me, both Rasik and Ravi agreed to riding out some place that weekend. Ravi suggested Bhimashankar and we agreed as we had never been to that side of the state.

So Rasik and his brother as pillion, Ravi and me along with Sunny as my pillion, set off early in the morning on a sunny saturday. The roads were beautiful and we had a ride nothing short of amazing. We stopped over at Lonavala after some more mind boggling night riding where Tabby(Rasik's nick name) had booked the UTI guesthouse. On the whole ride and back,all of us were just going gaga at how good it would be if we can have more bullets together and start a club or something. When we got back I got a call from a guy called Sachin Chavan from Pune who had started the Roadshakers(pune bullet club) a few months back. He really urged and inspired me to start something similar in Mumbai. He also gave me his good friend Rishad's no and asked me to contact him and get him in the club too. So with the dream firmly in our heads, Rasik and me brainstormed over countless names for the club over the phone- Road Thunder, Road Thumpers, Eagles... and what not. We finally settled on Inddiethumpers with Inddie for Indian and Thumpers for our single cylinder bulls and I opened up our own yahoogroups site. I posted messages inviting people from bulletclub(yahoogroups site) and other bullet related yahoogroups. Mayur was the first to reply back. He was very enthusiastic about the whole thing.

So the first club meet was held one December morning at Worli seaface with Rasik, Ravi, Rishad, Mayur, Sudharshan and myself. We talked about Bullets and were pretty excited about the whole thing starting up. After a few weeks I got a call from Sachin, congratulating me and asking us to have a ride together with Roadshakers in Alibaugh. We were pretty excited. But on Sunday morning suddenly everyone backed out of the ride. So Rasik and me rode out to meet the Roadshakers for the very first time - our reputation was at stake. Anyways I told Tabby what the heck we will still go even if there are 2 bikes, so Sunny,Rasik and myself rode to Alibaugh to find 12 gloriously thumping Roadshakers arriving there one by one,we felt small :( and were ridiculed by some of the Shakers.They were saying - Is this all you guys could manage from Bombay? Just 2 bikes? I considered the spirit that we went there much more and so did some of the Shakers who shared this view too. So that was the first time we (both Tabby and me) rode together with such a huge pack from Alibaugh to Kashid beach and it was glorious. The feeling of bulls roaring together that you get specially when ur new to the whole thing is amazing. We came back to Bombay and blamed our fellow thumpers of putting up a poor show. All of us started the hunt for more members, we made club pamphlets, posted messages on bullet groups,caught bullet riders in traffic and talked to them about the club and what not. Soon some more members joined, among them were Oais,Subbu,Dinesh(who soon got the title of the in-house techie),Rohit and Mark. We planned a trip to Daman next. And man we had a great turnout of 10 bikes. The season being January there was a very pleasant chill in the air. We had a great time drinking and partying and that time there were no girls on the rides so guys were all the more chilled out.

After a few days I got a call from Sachin again and we decided on a common trip again to Rajmachi. We posted lot of messages on the club for everyone to bloody turn up this time. I called up each guy again and again to make sure they were coming. Come Saturday - there was a huge group from our side - we had never seen it before. So many new guys - Nikhil (Mad Cat)- who seemed so innocent sitting near Akbarallys quietly, only later on we came to know the pucca kamina he is. A parsi guy called Histasp came with his friend Zubair.Then there was Joshua, Mandeep with his wife, Sudharshan, Bruce and Regan(both of whom came in the 2nd batch in the night). When we reached Ramakrishna in the evening, we did so before the Roadshakers came - and man were there big smiles on our faces, we had outnumbered them this time- there were around 19 bikes from our side - later 5 more bikes came in the night - taking our total bikes count to 24 - and the Shakers were 14 bikes.

Ha! Now they know what Inddiethumpers will be like in the future!! Anyways lots of hugs, food and smokes later Sachin took us to Rajmachi in the night - we had no idea what we were in store for.Lots of people fell, some burnt their clutch plates. Joshua opened up his clutch in the middle of night to let it cool down.We finally made it up. Then I had to again come back with Sachin to get some Roadshakers and Thumpers (Bruce, Regan and few more guys) who were coming late - we met them at Ramakrishna and rode back. I was riding alongside Bruce, who seemed a very decent and quiet guy at that time(GOD knows how appalling this may sound to all of us now). Our clutch heated up and we stopped the bike in the jungle and shut off the engine,man! that was solitude at its best. It was as dark as it can be. Some of us tried to go to the Fort in the night, but came back soon. Dinesh had brought his guitar and Sudharshan his harmonica and all were having a ball of a time in front of the bonfire and this time there were lots of women in the club as well- Rose, Shweta, Jenny and Mandeep's wife. Well that trip told the Shakers not to take us lightly from now on.

These were the months when we really started to grow as a club and start getting recoginition from everywhere.Papers covered us,some magazines wanted to cover us and the meetings at carter road became real fun with a huge turnout of at least 30 odd bikes each week and more people joining in each day. We did some wonderful trips these days including a tremendous one to Mahableshwar.We had booked a whole bungalow to stay during the trip and had a great time. We were covered by Autocar magazine during the same trip. Sachin and Manish from Roadshakers also joined for the ride. From this very trip is the famous Mahableshwar table top photo of the thumpers. Then we did another fantastic trip to Khodala after this ride where we stayed in an adventure camp there.Sometime in between me,Nix and Oais did a 4 day whirlwind trip-which was my first long ride.We rode for around 16-1800 kms from Bombay,Nasik,Aurangabad,Nnanded,Bidar,Zahirabad,Pune and back. It was a great ride and we really ripped on the open and beautiful highways we found.An eye opener to long rides i'd say, we did a very basic mistake in this one and rode a lot in the night and less in the day. One can cover more distance in the day, not in the night but one learns with experience.Night riding does have its own charm espcially though if the roads are empty.My lovely 350's engine ceased on the way back and I rode it with all that clatter for almost 700kms back to bombay.

Then came a call from the BBC guys. They wanted to cover the club. We arranged for a day trip to Malshej. We also invited Roadshakers to join us at Malshej.Sachin had moved to Delhi and Suraj was managing things then. I reached Akbarally's in Chembur and the turnout was more than we ever expected,there were 53 bikes in allThis was also the first time i met Gaurav Jani who had come on that ride with us. There were lots of new faces too, though its sad to say many of them never turned up after the ride. During that time we had some tension brewing internally in the club. Well the ride to Malshej turned out to be a poser than a ride. All the time we were being told to do this and that by the cameraman and most of us were really frustrated by the end of it all. We met Suraj near malshej who with the shakers was about to go back after waiting for us for so long.There were 6 bikes from Roadshakers. During that period lot of amazing guys were there in the club, RD,Jivs,Bittu and group.We used to have a real good time joking and pulling each others legs.Sunny singh was always there too(and still is) who had an amazing sense of humour

There was another good ride to celebrate Roadshakers first anniversary at Sinhagarh fort when we all rode down to pune and then the fort. We had an amazing time joking and drinking with the shakers. For me that was the best ever get together of thumpers and shakers. We had a member called Swami bodhi in the club,a cool guy who is part of Osho commune in pune. A lot of our thumpers got hooked up with him in the possibility of getting in the commune ;) Rasik had bought his 500cc by that time and i still had my 350 cc. So on the way back when all we 350 guys were racing a strectch at throttle locked, boom comes tabby on his Godspeed and whooshes by.The 350 felt very small,I resolved to get a 500 very soon. Somewhere in between while going home for Diwali i met our Amal on the train and got to know that he too had a bullet-voila-the guys a hardcore inddiethumper ever since.

Well the articles came in the magazines and we also saw our faces on the tube for the first time a few months later. Meanwhile we also had resolved the internal problems we had in the club.Then I had to goto bangalore on a project and i missed out all the fun on our clubs first anniversary bash in december 2002 and then also the first version of Rider Mania which Vernon had planned. Later on Gaurav from 60kph joined up for a great ride to Bhandardara with the thumpers along with some Shakers. I unfortunately could not attend it since i was in Bangalore chilling out with RTMC guys.Heard that Gaurav introduced the thumpers to night riding without the headlights on. The Inddiethumpers were featured on The Week magazine in January as well.

Back in Bangalore i was itching to lay my hands on a bullet. Prashanth from RTMC came to my rescue and with his help we bought a great second hand 500cc for me, a 96 model-faded dull grey. But the engine was in great shape,the gear box needed some work which i got done from Muneer da. He's the best mechanic for bullets I've ever come across in my opinion. I got the bike painted chrome and silver and Rode the bike back to Bombay from Bangalore in 1 and half days when my project ended in Jan end. Immediately did a great trip to Ganpatipule with the club where i met Gautam for the first time.He had a yellow coloured old 350 and seemed to be brimming over with enthusiasm. The 3 day ride to Ganpatipule comes in the best rides of the club. The beaches were just amazing and deserted and we had a great time trying to drag on them.

Other good rides followed in 2003 and we also got many new and enthusiastic members. Then there came the Mahableshwar trip again.We booked the same bungalow and saw the India-pakistan match in the world cup.What a thrill,50 odd screaming voices at the top of the lungs for India to win,and win we did!!Seems thumpers cheered Indians home to victory!There was an unfortunate incident between Rasik and Zubair that night. We all tried to calm both of them down but nothing helped. We tackled the matter once we were back home and unfortunately Zubair had to be asked to leave the club.

Then came the big one.The Mother of all the rides, Ladakh. Me and Bruce,Rasik,Waseem etc had been planning on this for quite sometime. We met Gaurav and he guided us on the route and planning for the trip.There were seven of us for the ride me,Bruce,Madcat,Sameer Goli,Oais,Rajiv Ahuja and Anshu.We had a very hard but very satisfying trip.You can read the ladakh trip log for details. Coming back from there it seemed that I could take my bike almost over anything, be it potholes or no road at all :) I then got married to Shweta in July and Inddiethumpers is in many ways responsible for us being together and being so very happy. Thankyou guys!

More trips came and a big one was Guhaghar which was a great ride on the same Bombay Goa highway that we all love so much.By this time a whole new breed of thumpers had started up which consists of very loyal guys to the club and i think they will stick around for a long long time. Rajiv Shah,Dipesh,Saurabh,Prem,Bozi all had become very active in the club. In between i bought a RD,which i believe every bulleteer should keep as a second bike. The bike has as much character in it as the bullet has and is probably the only other bike which grows on you apart from the bullet. Quite a few guys apart from me have RD as second bike with them,Rasik,Rajiv Ahuja and Bruce being the few in the club. Me,Shweta,Rasik,Bruce,Vijay and Rajiv did a fantastic 5 day trip to Goa in monsoons and we had an amazing time relaxing in the Leela resorts over there. On the way back my 500's floating bush went kaput, i rode the bike all the way back from Goa like that.Really trusty bikes Enfield's are, she came home effortlessly. It was pouring cats and dogs all the way back from Chiplun till mumbai but me,Bruce and Rajiv made it in around 10 hours time.

We were covered by Channel [V] on our ride to Bhimashankar and that ride really made us a household name as people in the streets began recogonizing us. We also did a peace rally for bomb blasts protest which was attended by a huge crowd of 63. But we were disheartned at the way the whole event was organized by the sponsoring company. We did another peace rally which was organized by Round Table 19 courtesy Subbu which was a great success and also did a recent rally for homeless children. I had to come to US a few months later and we had a huge party at my place where the whole thumper gang landed up. There Vernon showed up as a pleasant surprise. He had recently moved to Bombay from Chennai. I have been abroad ever since October 2003, but the club has been constantly growing day by day and we have many new enthusiastic people managing things like Guri,Dilip,Yatin,Spike and Yash and many many more new guys. Vernon helped Inddiethumpers host a spectacular Rider Mania 2005 which had the largest gathering of bullet riders till date,with more than 280 bikes turning out from all over.

Dilip is now helping Rajiv shoulder the responsibility of moderating the group while I also help them out online. Though i may ride the world's largest bike now, i can honestly say this, the feeling of a Royal Enfield is totally different and holds its own against any modern day motorcycle in terms of character and fun. And nothing can ever match the high i used to get riding together with the club. Here's to looking forward to riding with my brothers again and to Inddiethumpers acheiving new heights day by day.

Ride Safe,
Daman