Riding 10,000 kilometres on a motorcycle for a long stretchof 35 days can surely be a pain in the back. But ask Delhiite Sundeep Gajjar ifhe’s still nursing any sores and he laughs it off with, “All I remember now isthat it was great fun.” Even if that called for braving extreme temperaturesranging from a maximum of 47 degrees Celsius in the UAE to 6 degrees Celsius inSlovakia and cutting through terrain that wasn’t smooth all the time. This tripcame out of his participation in the World Ducati Week 2012 held in June thattook him off on a road trip from Dubai to Italy astride a Ducati Multistradathat had been tweaked to cover long distances. The World Ducati Week is one ofthe largest cult gatherings on superbikes in the world and for Sundeep biking issecond nature, which is why he was there.
Fond of photography, the 32-year-old Sundeep is a passionateadventurer and a Ducati aficionado for whom this gruelling but exhilaratingtrip was a dream come true. “I clicked 6,000 photographs, captured more than 30hours of video footage and wrote up to 20,000 words in blog entries but aboveall, it was an amazing experience simply because it took me across a widevariety and cross-section of cultures and geographies,” he recalls. The passagetook through Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia andAustria before finally reaching his destination where he was awarded a trophy.
Incidentally, Sundeep is also the one responsible forstarting a revolution of sorts among young Indian bikers through a club calledXBHP which has members from India and abroad. The club arranges for meets invarious Indian cities and also organises a Himalayan adventure trip each year.“We established the club in 2003 and as far as I know this is the biggest suchbiker club of its kind in India. However, we want to take it further and extendthe magnitude of our activities. Funds of course remain the biggest crunch,” hesays.
“You can’t survive on something like biking. It needs a goodamount of money and the biking culture is yet to take off in a big way inIndia. But more than biking, I think it provides a window to all the issues ourcountry is faced with and maybe youngsters getting together will help findsolutions in the long run,” he concludes.
