I got my first motorcycle when I was in my 6th semester of college. It was a honda h’ness CB350. I had only ever commuted to college on my activa until then. It was my dad’s decision to buy one, for some reason he was motivated to buy a bike. Obviously I use it more than him now.

When I was a kid one of my uncles owned a Yamaha R1 and I have liked bikes ever since then. He also owned an Aprilia RSV4 later on and a whole slew of KTM 390s and most recently a KTM 390 adv. The roar of the engine of a liter bike was something else to behold. Little did I realise as a kid that these motorcycles were quite actually literal death machines that would go incredibly fast at breakneck speeds. Those aggressive looks were enough to seduce a younger me into the world of motorcycling.

In college one of my college seniors owned a h’ness too, and hearing the lovely note of the exhaust as he pulled into college was somewhat enough to convince me that this was a great motorcycle. The first time I got on a motorcycle to ride it though was when I got on my friend’s h’ness and just did a few rounds on it. Later on after owning my own h’ness I realised why people loved the soft, buttery clutch and refined engine. It is truly a lovely bike to ride.

Riding a motorcycle is a lot like flying to me. Its probably the closest I feel like I can come to flying. You just cut through places, here one moment and gone the next. Cruising on highways, just taking in the scenery. But not in a static way, in a much more dynamic manner. Watching the scenery pass you by. Its a feeling you’d understand if you got on 2 wheels and just rode off. Its incredibly different from driving a car. In a car you are sheltered from the elements. On a bike, the feelings, sensation, the wind, the temperatures feel like they are changing every few moments. Its something else. As I said, you just quite literally cut through places. You become one with the machine, the screaming engine, the singing exhaust, the movements of your hands and legs, coordinating and changing gears, all of the fluid motions you make are ingrained into your muscle memory. You can quite literally go wherever you want to, until wherever you can see, the freedom, the beauty of all of it is truly very cathartic. Not to mention doing this with friends makes the experience even better.

The sensation of all of it is something that just unexplicably makes me happy. I could go on, and just keep talking about how it makes me feel but the point is this is something I love a lot. Its something that I’m really happy doing and something that has been ingrained deeply into my personality and memories now.

But obviously if you fall, you die.