Without the beach the heat in Goa can be oppressive. But for us, there was no respite. We were hemmed in at Vagator, the venue of the second edition of India Bike Week, surrounded by ocher-coloured mounds on two sides and the closest beach many kilometres away. The dust and gravel festival grounds made it that much worse.
Perhaps it was all intentional, part of the ruggedness that comes with the bikes. They called the rendezvous “The Woodstock of Biking” and touted it as the biggest and meanest of its kind in India. The first such event, in 2013, attracted motorcycle aficionados of all hues, more than 6,000 of them. This year the scene was even more flamboyant, drawing all comers to the sweltering cauldron at Vagator, despite the hefty entry fee.
And if you were a biker you had it all here for you. There was gleaming steel and burning rubber. Bikes of various makes, styles and designs were arrayed under various categories. There were accessories that you would probably get nowhere else. There were bike talks, informal at the Ladakh Tent and a bit more studied at the auditorium where the likes of Ted Simons and Nick Sanders — veteran bikers famous for circumnavigating the world on their choppers — held forth.
On the glamour front there were girls galore (and more than a few older women) in short skirts and tank tops, never mind if some exposed only cellulite. The riders revved their bikes to announce their arrival and kept their headlights on. Men, their stubble-covered jaws firmly set, wore bandanas and tattoos not helmets.
The centerpiece of India Bike Week was the HOG (Harley Davidson Group) parade, where about 1,000 Harley riders converged on Goa from across India. As they entered the festival grounds, the guttural boom of their bikes resounded through all the pavilions and the machines kicked up plumes of dust in their wake.
A stuntman wows the crowd with a daredevil jump.
There was only awe at this unabashed exhibition of machismo. There is clearly a hierarchy in the biking world and Harley riders are the biking elite. There are legends about how quickly two Harley riders bond with each other for life. It’s a family —mostly of the rich — and they tell you they have their own unwritten code and behaviour.
As a phalanx of HOG riders paused to take in the applause, drowned somewhat by their exaggerated revving, I edged closer to a guy on a black customised Harley and asked him, “How come there are no girls among you riding in this parade?”
He looked at me through his Polaroid shades and, pointing to his bike hollered, “This is my girl. And I am riding her.”
But India Bike Week is more a monument to testosterone. There was a pavilion called the “Brotherhood of Bikers”. Here, participants could bond over their machines and talk of road adventures that men can share with only men. There was a tyre-lifting competition where beefy men took turns hefting motorcycle tyres – half a dozen each on each arm. There were the open-air watering holes – one called the Howling Dog Bar – where you hung around for a drop and gossip.
But the most favoured watering hole was the Bikini Bike Bar where men lined up to have their bikes washed by girls in tiny shorts and shirts. Goa may be “modern” enough for such exhibitionism but it was still India, so not so modern enough to have Indian women doing the scrub-and-dance routine. Eastern Europeans obliged the crowds instead.
The bike wash drew big crowds even though the models weren’t Indian.
Among the evening entertainments were the gladiatorial free-for-all contests where the fighters stopped only when the opponent was down and bleeding, often with a broken nose. Even boxing has rules and a certain elegance. This seemed too barbaric. But perhaps it was only me who was flinching. There were petite girls near me egging on the pugilists.
For those with stomachs for lesser spectacles, there were pushups and chin-ups and arm-wrestling. Here many from the audience participated and were promptly rewarded with a memento for their embarrassing performance.
But perhaps the most spectacular show was the one put on by two stuntmen (foreigners again). They did marvels with their bikes, speeding off a curved ramp high in the air where they somersaulted, kicked their legs back and, after a jaw-dropping eternity, landed smoothly down a ramp.
There was too much to see and too much too take in, but thankfully there was music and there were the bars.
It was only after the festival the next day that that we clambered onto a beach and finally found Goa and the silence again.