Riding with the Bulls - Find out what Mumbai’s Bullet-mad aficionados do on weekends!
Autocar India, May 31, 2002

What do Mumbai’s Bullet-mad aficionados do on weekends? It took a high-octane ride to find out.

Saturday. It was just a few minutes to two in the afternoon when Mahabaleshwar was rocked. The guttural cough of 20 Royal Enfield Bullets clearing their throats together sent mothers scurrying for their children. For a few rare minutes the women were freed from the probing eyes of the alpha Indian male as the Bullets rumbled down the streets.

Welcome to a ride with the Inddiethumpers.

It began at six in the morning when 20, 18bhp thumpers from Mumbai’s Bullet Club rode out leaving behind office politics, bank overdrafts and unrequited love. All bound together by just one thread – an obsession with the ‘50s vintage Royal Enfield. An obsession that gets them together every Sunday evening, and leads them down the high way every month. Cruising at 80kph, the steady thump of the 350cc piston is relaxed. Your mind shifts into neutral and meanders into a long-ignored thought nestled in some neglected recess of your mind. And follows it aimlessly. A speck in the horizon starts taking distinctive shape till you can read the ‘Horn OK Tata’. A twist of the wrist and the Bullet banishes the lumbering Leyland into the rearview mirror. And your mind shifts back to neutral.

It’s a different ball game after you exchange the straight of the highway to the serpentine curves leading up to Mahabaleshwar. Every steeply inclined blind curve hides a potential Michael Schumacher behind the wheels of a truck. So goodbye to leisurely cruising or admiring the scenery. It’s making sure that the Dunlops are kept off the gravel on the kerb and getting the correct line and speed into the corners. Hit a corner too fast and you have two options. The first will have your brake liners smoking. The second will put you wide off your turn. So either you are target for oncoming traffic, or you start wishing that your Enfield had parachutes.

If you think that riding the Bull is all about muscles and testosterone, meet Nicolitta. Alias Nicky. Her quiet demeanour does a 360-degree when she prods down on the kick ad plays the curving roads around Panchgani and Mahabaleshwar with practiced ease. And then there is Shweta. Kicking up dust on the flat tabletops of Panchgani on boyfriend Daman’s Machismo!

It is now late Sunday afternoon, and the pack is headed back to Mumbai. The pace is a bit quicker as everybody’s mind has kicked back to their Monday schedules. The Inddiethumpers are on their home run, when their invincibility is shattered by a passing blur of silver. Followed by a blur of red, yellow and blue and every colour of the rainbow.

Ten kilometers later, the blurs are parked by the highway while their riders stretch their bally-shod legs. A Goldwing, a Valkyrie, a Ninja … a dozen huge monsters each out of every biker’s drool book. Isn’t that Yash and Avanti Birla?! It’s biker to biker talk, and yes it’s the exclusive over-600cc bikers club returning back after a weekend at the Birla farmhouse in Alibaug. Hey, it don’t matter what you ride, it’s the ride that matters.

So here’s the point, dear reader. What are you doing this weekend?