Riding a Harley-Davidson is not about just riding a motorcycle. It is not about hopping onto it to go to the market to buy a dozen eggs. It is not about using it for your daily commute sweltering in traffic, cursing the long time spent on the travel from your home to that daily jail that, since we live in an age where ‘political correctness’ has been put on a pedestal, has to be called your office.
Buying a Harley for stuff like this is as ridiculous and incomprehensible as going to the best steak house in town and being served cardboard and motor oil instead of meat and wine.
You buy a Harley to break free from the mundane, to celebrate camaraderie and the open road, to revel in the joy of not knowing what your final destination might be. You buy a Harley to answer that primal call of the open road. Because deep down at the very foundation of our DNA is the need and the necessity to wander and roam. Our planet was populated like that after all.
In tune with how all this ties in with the Harley way of life, Harley-Davidson India held a very unique and intriguing ride this time around that led to the unveiling and launching of its latest offering in India – the Harley-Davidson 1200 Custom Sportster.
This ride was unusual by way of which, the company essentially brought in elements that were such an integral part of the Harley-Davidson way of life.
The media were divided into groups of four and put up at different hotels in Jodhpur. Even before the ride started, no matter how many times I tried to prise out information about how much we’d be riding in a day and where we were headed, the company was absolutely tight-lipped about the whole affair. Where we were supposed to ride to and how the next few days would pan out would all be revealed in the form of clues they said.
Each member of each group was given clues by way of clandestine cards slipped under the hotel room’s door. And together with the other members of his group, these clues would provide answers about what the plan was. This whole exercise had a sense of riding to enjoy the ride without particularly knowing what your final destination would be. And, this solving clues together actually built camaraderie amongst strangers whose only common link was the passion for the road and motorcycles. And, these are two elements that are sort of tenets cast in stone of the Harley way of life.
