Thirty-five-year-old Nicolitta Pereira simply loves to wear the helmet, hop on a motorbike and ride the road less travelled. Considering she's always led a sheltered life in the predominantly Catholic suburb of Bandra in Mumbai and there's no one among her family or friends who's remotely into biking, she hasn't quite figured out how she got fascinated by the two-wheel wonder. "Coming from a family who took holidays to Goa every year, the biking bug may have bitten me when I saw wellbuilt German women riding bikes there," she says.

So her brother borrowed a friend's old out-of-shape Bullet and taught her to ride in the lane outside her house. Soon she gained the confidence to venture out onto the road alone "and I realised it felt really good not to have that extra weight of a pillion rider behind you". She spent the next decade riding borrowed bikes on Mumbai streets and holding down several jobs, including being a bridal wear designer.

Then she stumbled into 60 Kph, a motorcycle travel club. "On my first weekend trip outside Mumbai with a friend, I met up with the group and was invited to join them. After a short ride with them, we ventured towards Ladakh." The group was attempting to reach Khardung La, 50 kms from Leh, the highest motorable point in the world (at that time in 2002), touch the Indo-China border and come back all the way.
Pereira agreed to a ride that stretched across 7,800 kms, spanned four states, spread over 35 days and involved harsh climates, rough terrain and punishing living conditions. "I always wanted to see Ladakh. In fact, the first trip is always the best since you are absolutely clueless about what to expect." So she quit her job and organised herself for the trip ahead - getting the proper gear, equipment, spares and servicing her bike.

The only practice she put in for this gruelling ride was a three-day trip to Goa, "which was essentially to test myself and see whether I could be on the bike for that long. Not realising that Goa was nothing compared to what I was about to do!"
Reminiscing about the trip, Pereira says, "As we left Delhi and moved closer towards the mountains, I was totally blown away. At several points I was reduced to tears. I couldn't believe I had the opportunity to see and experience such exquisite sights of nature - the mountains, the snow - everything was so beautiful and overwhelming."

But it was not an easy ride. There were several instances when she didn't feel so fortunate. "The worst experience was when the chassis of my second-hand Enfield broke down completely." The first thing Pereira did was to sit down and cry since she thought she would have to ride pillion with somebody. But she hadn't bargained for the amazing technical skill of some of the 60Kph team members. "The guys tied the handlebars to the broken frame and one of them rode my bike while I used his. They got my two-wheeler welded at an army depot some 30 kms away." That was it. For the rest of the trip, the bike stood her in good stead, give or take a few cranky moments - the clutch plates that needed to be changed or a few things that kept falling off. After a while it became a standing joke in the group. "They called me nutcracker!" she laughs.

For someone who had led an extremely disciplined life, the trip was a revelation. “I realised I wasn’t the person I thought I was. I have grown up in a protected environment. I am a meticulous person. I always like to be well turned out. But when I was out there, it didn’t matter how I looked. It liberated me in a certain way.” It also opened her out in ways she hadn’t expected. “I became more accepting of the way things were in life.” Though it was a first ‘living in the open’ with no decent lodging and boarding facilities and without the luxury of a daily bath either, she saw it as a true adventure. “At no point during the trip was I uncomfortable or concerned about these things. I was enjoying the ride so much that even the cold bothered me only when we stopped at night. Once I was padded up and on the bike, the journey was pure bliss.”

The agenda wasn’t the destination or how many miles they could clock up in the day, but rather on how much they could enjoy the ride. “So we would stop often and exult in the sheer beauty of the place. Around every bend in Ladakh, there is something different to see and experience.”
Reaching Khardung La at 18,380 feet above sea-level, after days of bad roads, steep inclines, rainy days, slush and muck, was a memorable experience. But hurtling descents was the toughest challenge for Pereira. She recalls a treacherous patch of steep road after the Jalori Pass, where the bike cannot be stopped in the middle of the ascent. “If you do that, you have to go all the way down and start again. The two-wheeler just won’t fire in the middle of that incline. In addition to this, the road is very narrow and you have to avoid any incoming descending traffic.” She mentally prepared herself and managed the incline in a single go. “But when I was coming down, I was terribly scared. A senior 60 Kpher was riding behind me and kept telling me to press the brake and release the clutch. But I was so nervous that I was doing everything wrong!”

What had started out as a dream soon became an addiction for Pereira by the time she returned. “I had gone to Ladakh just to satisfy my initial urge. But then I got addicted. I need to go on these trips quite often, otherwise I get cranky and irritated. And riding in the city is a punishment for me!”
After that landmark ride to Ladakh, Pereira (currently head of department - Technical Design with 4004 Incorporated, a primary division of the Unisource Group), manages to take off at least twice a year. Along with other 60 Kph members, she has been in a fortnightly trip to Uttarakhand and to Kutch and a 30-day excursion to the North-East. “We choose offbeat places. Even the locals are sceptical about some of the routes we take, but we manage to find those dirt track roads anyway.”

So she winds herself through thick forests, snaky roads, dirt patches that stretch for miles on end and throw up fists of mud as the bike wheels slam into them. “Riding on these kinds of roads gives me a high.”
Pereira has embarked on several solo trips as well. In fact she attributes her confidence to the motorcycle travel club, which has a vast network in every city. “Should I have a breakdown, I just have to call a member who is at that place and I know somebody will come to my assistance. So I am never completely alone.”
Being a solitary woman on the roads for days at a stretch hasn’t bought her any bad experiences, only interesting ones. “If I stop at a dhaba for a chai break, a crowd gathers around me in a short while and stares at me. I have learnt to ignore them. They can stare all they want. I am going to have my chai anyway!”
Untrodden paths beckon her. On her bike she can serenade the mountains, tear down the tar stretches and conquer heights. The wind accompanies her, chasing her dreams. As she sums up, “Being on the bike means not being separated from nature.”