When We Just Rode for the heck of it… Urvashi Patole
Updated: 22 hours ago
When I started riding, I didn't know what a motorcycle community was. I heard about a group ride happening and decided to join it. That's how I met people.
We started getting familiar with each other, forming bonds and riding together more often. I'd slow down and look back to see if the rider behind me had caught up. If someone had a puncture or a breakdown, we stayed. A friend coming back to the city late at night? We'd go to the station and pick them up. It was just what you did for people you rode with.
The rides themselves were simple. Meet early, get on the bikes and head somewhere. We'd eat vada pav, have cutting chai, talk absolute rubbish and eventually figure out when we were heading back.
I remember one trip to Dandeli in particular. The roads were beautiful, but that's hardly what we talked about afterwards. There were punctures, breakdowns, wrong turns and a fairly heated argument about where we were stopping for lunch. Then we ate far too much and spent the next stretch of the ride trying to stay awake.
A lot of those people are still my friends. We met through motorcycles, but we ended up becoming friends outside of them too.
There were nights when we'd sit somewhere at 1 am with terrible paper-cup coffee and talk about everything except motorcycles. Work, money, relationships, parents, whatever was happening in our lives. You could meet a person on one Sunday ride and, years later, still be in touch with them.
We were there for each other long before tagging each other on Instagram to show what friendship looked like. There weren't photographs from every ride. We weren't making Reels together. We didn't have to write a long post about how much the group meant to us.
We just knew.
The T-shirts. The late-night station pickups. The punctures. The arguments. The roadside conversations that went on much longer than the tea we had ordered.
Those things made the friendships.
Riding has changed, and so have we. I don't think the old days were perfect. They weren't. There were egos, arguments, club politics and people who didn't get along.
But I do miss how easy it was to be around each other without thinking about how any of it looked from the outside.
You could spend an entire day with a group, come home filthy and exhausted, and have absolutely nothing to show for it.
Except the memory.
And for a long time, that was enough.
We fought too. Properly, sometimes.
“Why didn't you wait?”
“I told you I needed fuel.”
“You said we were stopping here!”
That was the kind of argument we had. Five or ten minutes of yelling on the side of the road, then helmets back on and off we went. By dinner, we were usually laughing about something else.
I remember getting club T-shirts made. Half the gang travelled across the city to the printer's shop and sat there drinking beer, cutting vinyl stickers and sorting out sizes because the T-shirts had to be ready the next morning.
It was a ridiculous way to spend an evening. We could have sent one person.
We didn't.
Then Facebook came along, followed by WhatsApp and Instagram, and riding became a very different thing.
The number of riders grew. There are clubs and communities everywhere now. You can find people to ride with in a city you've never been to, get a mechanic's number, find a place to stay or check a route before you leave home.
That's all useful.
But there is also so much more attention on everything around the ride.
Who is riding with whom. Who got invited. Who got tagged. Who was left out of the photograph. Who got the brand deal. Who got the credit. Who has more followers.
I sometimes look at my feed and think about those Sundays when ten of us would spend the whole day riding and I'd come home without a single photograph of myself.
And nobody cared.
We had the day.
The things I remember most are usually completely stupid. Watching a friend tip over on a trail at 5 km/h, making sure he was okay and then laughing until we couldn't breathe. Getting lost and pretending we knew exactly where we were going. Sitting at a dhaba after lunch because we'd eaten so much that getting back on the bikes felt like a bad idea.
"There were nights when we'd sit somewhere at 1 am with terrible paper-cup coffee and talk about everything except motorcycles. Work, money, relationships, parents, whatever was happening in our lives."
By Urvashi Patole
About the Author
Urvashi Patole, famously known as the Alpha Bikerni, joins us as a guest writer for this special issue of BRRog. As the pioneering force behind India’s first all-women motorcycle association—The Bikerni—she has been the invisible hand guiding some of the country’s most iconic motorcycling movements.
Beyond her extensive work within the community, Urvashi serves as an unshakeable bedrock for riders, acting as both a fierce advocate and a trusted anchor whenever challenges arise on the road. A long-time friend of the Biker Radio Rodcast, she continues to champion the spirit of our global biking clan.
Consider this nostalgic reflection a teaser—we are saving her full, incredible journey as a special feature coming soon on The Long Way Home.
BRRog is our blog page. We publish articles from contributors with a penchant for the written word — stories, ideas, observations, provocations and the occasional rabbit hole. If something's been rattling around in your head and you think other riders might enjoy the ride, write to us.
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