Wind in her hair: How this founder and MD loves to tour the country on her bike

For 43-year-old Ambika Sharma, the Founder and MD of Pulp Strategy, a digital communications and marketing agency, her love for biking started when she was just 12 years old. Her father, a retired army officer, loved his Royal Enfield and inculcated that love in his young daughter. She got her first bike—another Royal Enfield—when she was in college in Delhi in the late 1990s. At that time, not too many women rode bikes. The BBC programme Wheels wanted someone to test ride their bikes and Sharma got that as a freelance gig. “That got me an opportunity to ride every two-wheeler that was coming into the market, adding to my love for bikes,” says Sharma. She retained her trusted Royal Enfield right through college and work, and when she was finally able to afford it, she moved to a Honda 600cc Super Sport in 2007. In 2010, she moved to a Honda 1000cc.

Having tried her hand at sports bikes, she moved to a Harley-Davidson Road King in 2013. “I wanted to go on this long tour with my dad. He was riding pillion and I wanted the right touring bike,” says Sharma. They did an 18-day trip of the coastline of India, from Delhi to Kanyakumari and back. “The plan was to eat fish at every village on the coastline,” smiles Sharma. The plan came about impromptu when Sharma’s father complained that there wasn’t good fish in Delhi. Post the trip, Sharma’s father bought his own bike—a Harley-Davidson SuperLow—and now for nearly eight years the father-daughter duo has been biking all over the country. “We have a list of the places we travelled to when I was a kid and we want to visit those places again,” says Sharma. They have ridden over 150,000 km across the country. They explore one state every year. They have already done trips to Gujarat, Nagaland, Odisha, J&K and Ladakh, among others. On the cards, is the North-East that they want to explore in detail.

Sharma’s other bike is a BMW GTL, also meant for touring. She prefers touring bikes as they are meant for long-distance travel. “You need to carry all your stuff with you, so the bike has to provide for that.”

@smitabw