As we look forward to the upcoming edition of the India Bike Week, we look back at the 2015 festival where Sirish knocked an item off his bucket-list — riding down to Goa aboard a Harley Davidson.
It’s two in the afternoon and there’s still no sign of our fellow bikers. Goa Ways, the dhaba strategically perched just after Nipani, where you hang a right off the NH 4 and hit the narrow state highway that leads to the Amboli ghat, is packed with Harleys. It’s the Wednesday before the India Bike Week and by the look of things, every second Harley owner in India is on his bike and heading to Goa.
I’ve been on the road for a good seven hours; but at least I was in bed in Pune when the rest of my group started in Mumbai two hours earlier. If I’m fried, I wonder what’s happening to them. I get a text from my wife; she left home in our Polo half an hour before me and has already reached Goa. I’m only half way there. And my Arai helmet has a dark visor. This could be a problem.
Screw it, let’s ride
In all fairness, I’d been forewarned. The best are too flowery to put in print but the gist was that the ride would be incredibly slow, the riders terrifically hopeless, and I would never have kids.
It’s incredibly slow – I grant you that. But there’s more than a hint of sour grapes to the rest. Harleys aren’t fast bikes but there’s – I don’t believe I’m saying this! – genuine pleasure to be had in hitting the highway on a Harley. The HOGs (Harley Owners Group, I’m sure you knew that) refer to the fast, mainly Jap bikes, as ‘plastic’ and soon I get so caught up in the banter that I join the chorus of laughter at a passing rider on an R1, ass up in the air, spine obviously set to be rearranged by the time he gets to Goa.
I’m astride a Fat Bob. Not having had much interest in Harleys up until now, I left it to our resident bike expert Abhay’s best judgment, with a gentle reminder that one day I will want to procreate. When offered a selection of cars or bikes, we motoring journalists always – always! – opt for the fastest, but with Harleys it doesn’t matter. Whether it’s a Street 750 or Night Rod or whatever, all are as fast (or slow) as the other. In fact, I’d soon learn, that the fastest Harley is a Street 750 (it can corner) but the debate is still out if it’s a proper Harley.
My Street Bob then. It doesn’t have too much chrome, which is a good place to start. It is stripped down, yet looks fat. I like the matte black tank, and the shiny black engine cases. The engine is massive and rocks on its mounts when fired up (reminds me of the old Scorpio). The twin headlamps look cool. The riding position is easy on my back. Parked in my driveway it looks cool as hell, much to the approval of my wife. And mum (!). It sits on the cusp of a performance dragster and laid-back cruiser, and we have 550km, from Pune to Goa, to find out which side the needle swings.
Freedom and the open road
Americans are the self-appointed custodians of freedom. Whether it is sending snipers to Afghanistan or bombing the f*ck out of Iraq, everything is in the pursuit of some jacked up notion of freedom. Many years ago, when asked what the Beat diesel stands for, a senior Chevrolet exec told me ‘freedom and the open road’. WTF!
But Harleys… they really come into their own on the open road.
NH 4, the highway leading out of Pune and to Bangalore, is perfect stomping ground for large cruisers. Having waited for two hours at the McDonald’s outside Pune for the rest of the Mumbai gang to catch up, we (the journos in the group) get fed up and head out on our own to Kolhapur. And my good friend Shumi, who is supposed to be leading our pack (I volunteer to bring up the rear), whacks open the throttle only to let off at the Maharashtra border.
Which is an inelegant way to ride a Harley.
Harleys don’t do well, wound out to the throttle stops (the triple clamp on Shumi’s Street Bob worked itself loose by Goa Ways). 120-130kmph, that’s the cruising speed my Fat Bob was built for, a speed at which the twin-cam 96 cubic inch motor (1585cc in the Queen’s English) operates at its optimum best. At around 3000rpm, it is in the meat of the powerband, to make the best of the 126Nm of torque. Harley doesn’t quote a power figure but it feels like 75bhp (which isn’t saying much for a 1.6-litre engine!), but that’s the Harley way. What I couldn’t understand was the tall gearing; second gets you to over 100kmph, sixth is so tall that under 100kmph you have to downshift, else even the enormous torque isn’t enough to prevent a bit of knocking. And the gear lever needs a nice tug with your foot to avoid the occasional false neutrals.
If you’re a sports bike enthusiast, everything about the Fat Bob will get your goat. But get with the program and there’s deep joy to be had on a Fat Bob at 120kmph. Open the throttle at low revs and I can hear the engine slurping air hungrily through that Screamin’ Eagle air filter. Which is neatly positioned just above my kneecap to the right of the fuel tank, and is literally called Heavy Breather! You can feel the two pistons move just that little bit faster, to a corresponding increase in decibels from the exhaust. It’s old-school, pushrods and all, but it feels wonderfullyconnected; wonderfully relaxed. It gives you alone time, it’s fast enough to make decent progress, not so fast that you have to concentrate 110 per cent. It gives you time to think… about life, the universe, and the growing agony in my tailbone.
Can Harleys turn?
It’s nearly 3 by the time we head out of Goa Ways. Some 10-15 bikes in the lead group, all journos. I signed up for this ride to get into the head of the typical Harley owner, but nobody seems to be in any hurry to get a move on. So it’s with old buddies that we head out to the Amboli ghat and after a bit of photography (and the wide-open-throttle antics of the lead riders), the pack splits up. I’m with my riding partner Ravi Ved from ZigWheels and Abhinav Mishra from Top Gear and that’s when it hits me – our Indian Motorcycle Of The Year is really damn good. Both Ravi and Abhinav are on Street 750s, a bike with half the displacement and a third of the cost of my Street Bob but it is as quick, as relaxed and visibly more comfortable than my bike.
And come the twisties, it is much quicker.
The chunky 16-inch front tyre on my bike actually gives me good confidence in the front end, and there’s decent grip, but my 320kg bike has no chance in hell of keeping up with the lighter, nimbler Streets. On the Fat Bob, ground clearance is a problem, but then we come across the Rajasthan group, one of them on a Street Glide, and boy, oh boy, does that bike have ground clearance issues! If you’re on a Street, you’re sorted, even a Fat Bob is okay, but otherwise Harleys don’t like corners that much.
Dark custom nose jobs
By the time we are done with Amboli and hit the highway in Goa, it is getting to dusk and we make haste. We’ve caught up with another bunch of Harley riders (it’s insane, the number of Harleys being ridden to Goa!) and we vent our frustrations of having to take it easy on the ghats, by ripping it open. Ten Harleys, all with open exhausts, all whacked open… oh lord… it’s the sound of thunder and brimstone. Of course, we aren’t doing more than 140 clicks, but it’s the highlight of my ride; it’s that moment when you feel part of a brotherhood, when you feel you belong in there, when you’re glad you’re not on a Street but on a proper Harley, with proper pushrods.
Ultimately, as it gets dark, I have to let off. My visor now has to stay open and I get a taste of what all those riders in open face helmets have been going through all day. My eyes start to water. I have to spit out bugs from my mouth. The smoke is choking my lungs. I know it looks cool, but how can anybody ride 550km with an open face helmet? The next day I meet some of those guys and they’re all sporting dark custom nose jobs, sunburnt from a day riding in the sun.
5 years of freedom
Harley is all about freedom. The freedom messaging is so strong, if you were at the IBW Harley party you’d think India only gained freedom from the Brits five years ago.
But what a party!
Harley is all over the IBW, so much so it should be re-named Harley Bike Week. The Harley party officially kicks off IBW and to blend in, I wore a Harley T-shirt. A good thing, because the only guys who weren’t in Harley gear were my fellow journos. 2500 Harleys came down to the IBW, and I can’t imagine even a single one not being ridden up to the Vagator grounds. All the guys were clothed from head to toe in Harley gear. Most had their better halves, also clothed in Harley gear. And all seemed to be having a blast.
And that’s the thing. These guys may not be hardcore bikers. They might be riding because it’s a ‘cool’ thing to do right now. They might have the most atrocious taste. And they might be fully paid up members of the mine-is-bigger-than-yours club. But who are we to judge? These born-again bikers are leading the surge in biking culture in India; if it weren’t for them buying big, fat cruisers, there’d be no sports bikes for the rest of us either. Biking festivals like the IBW are possible thanks to the enthusiasm shown by these guys. You have to be an enthusiast to take a week off from work to ride down to Goa, and spend god alone knows how much time at the local dealer dressing up for it.
Not all of them are showing off. On our way from Pune we passed a bunch of Harleys with Rajasthan plates; most of the guys representing the North India chapters (Capital, Himalaya et al) had ridden down, not
put their bikes on truck; I even met a dude who rode and will be riding back to Dehradun. And all those patches you see on every Harley rider’s de rigueur leather jacket are earned – you do a ride you earn a patch, that’s how it works.
Free head gaskets
What’s the deal with bikers revving the nuts off their bikes? All the Harley dealers rocked up with custom-designed Street 750s: some really nice flat-trackers, one with a suicide shifter, all with awesome paint jobs. And what did they do with it? Fired up the bike and revved the nuts off it. For me that one was one of the highlights of the party but the bikes were parked haphazardly in a poorly lit corner, my eardrums were shot to bits, and by late evening all the bikes were knocking on the doors of hell.
Daymakers and freight trains
Let’s be honest about it; hate them as much as you want, but a Harley is a visually impressive machine. I also doubt any Harley owner keeps his bike boggo-stock, and whether it is filters and exhausts or the chromed skull motifs everywhere, most of the bikes parked at IBW were seriously pimped out. The flashiest thing you can put on a Harley though are the LED lamps (jokes about it being the most sophisticated piece of kit on the bike weren’t received appreciatively). Even better, Harley-Davidson has a really tight naming department. Those LED lamps – they’re called Daymakers, with which you ‘own the night’! A Heritage Softail coming at you, with five Daymakers blazing away, is a hugely impressive thing, and there were quite a few of them on the road in Goa.
The normal headlamps, those are called Freight Trains. The aftermarket brakes are called ThunderStar, Aggressor and Agitator. There are Street Cannon, Shotgun and Buckshot exhausts. Even something called a
Thunder slip-on exhaust but I doubt there are too many takers for the Shorty. What they now need is a cool name for a helmet because almost all the Harley riders in Goa weren’t wearing helmets. In fairness, on the ride to Goa every rider (with the exception of those in pudding basins) was properly kitted but suddenly, in Goa, everybody felt invincible and couldn’t be arsed into wearing one. Not cool.
I almost bought one
I don’t suspect you buy a Harley because of the bike. They aren’t cheap and when the Martians poke around one they aren’t going to think very highly of our engineering skills. What you buy into is a community of genuine petrol heads. You meet guys who absolutely love their leather jackets, no matter the
sweltering Goa heat. They love patches, bikes, beer and rock music. And the Harley riding chicks know how to kick ass (literally).
I went to Goa a sceptic armed with a million jokes about Harley riders. Turns out, over three days at IBW (which was a superb festival in its own right), I ended up having more fun than the unnecessarily large displacement of my Fat Bob. So much so, that if my
childhood wasn’t filled with dreams of red sports bikes, I’d be tempted to buy into this club.
One thing’s for sure, I’m riding to India Bike Week next year, on a Harley. I’ve decided on which one too – the Street Glide, to which I’ll sync my phone and play songs extolling the virtues of freedom and the open road. I’ll just need to look for a group that stops less and rides more.