For the love of riding

In a recent all-women rally to the Himalayas arranged by Royal Enfield, Prerna Shinde from Pune was the youngest biker. She shares her story of falling in love with biking and her experience on the adventure

You and I were probably cribbing about our homework, fighting with our siblings over who got the last chocolate or sitting by the window and day-dreaming when we were 10 years old. Prerna Shinde, on the other hand, was learning to ride a Bullet and was doing a good job too. Fulfilling her father’s dream, she kept her fears aside and within a few months could cruise down the roads on the bike, without much worry. Not having a license and not being of the legal age to ride was the only thing that stopped this young girl from starting the engine and travelling to as far as she could. The 22-year-old travels whenever she gets a chance and her love for riding only keeps increasing. Back from her ride, we caught up with her to find out what it felt like being the youngest member of the rally, where she wants to travel to next and what she loves the most about riding.

For its 13th edition this year, Royal Enfield flagged off an all-women rally to the Himalayas. Led by Urvashi Patole and Sara Kashyap, the rally had about 20 bikers from all over the country covering more than 2,500 kilometres and Prerna was a part of the rally too. This is the longest she has ever travelled on her bike and could not stop gushing about how great her experience was. “The tracks were extremely hard and we did a lot of off-roading. There were places when even a small mistake could have resulted in us losing our life. On the whole, though it was a great experience that I will never forget,” she says. Till date, she has been to Kolhapur, Daman, Lonavala, Divyagarh, Mumbai and even Tapola on her bike.

When she started off, even though she learned on a Bullet, a Passion Plus bike was her first. It was just at the beginning of this year that her father gifted her a Classic 360 Royal Enfield and it is currently her most prized possession. “Riding a bike is extremely liberating. It takes away all the stress and allows you to explore dimensions of yourself that you never knew existed. I got to see a new me on all of my trips and there aren’t words to describe the feeling,” she shares. Currently doing her Bachelor of Commerce through Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu, under a distance learning programme, she is a final year student and post this wishes to enrol for an MBA degree too.

As part of the rally, she travelled through Solan, Narkanda, Manali, Jispa, Sarchu, Leh, Khardung La, Tso Moriri, Tso Kar, Manali, Gushaini and Chandigarh. It was a great motorcycling adventure for all women riders who were a part of it and the main idea behind it was to further encourage the passion to ride among women riders and travel new roads, the young girl believes.

salonee.mistry@goldensparrow.com

Originally published on The Golden Sparrow