For some it may be a blustering roar, but for 22-year old Zohair Ahmed, the sound of bikes is euphony on the road. He talks about bikes the way artists talk about their muse. That explains why the young biker from the City of Nawabs has already amassed more than 80000 subscribers and counting to his YouTube channel. This young ‘Motovlogger’ – a portmanteau of motorcycle, video and logging – is one of the five India Bike Week ambassadors, each of whom had conducted an Iconic Ride in a different part of the country during the build-up to the event.
India Bike Week, Asia’s biggest biker rave, will be spewing some dirt and noise of the good kind, in Goa, on the 24th and 25th of November. The congregation of 20,000 bikers, 270 bike clubs and close to 100 exhibitors promises to be a biker’s paradise in its fifth edition attracting the biggest manufacturers, enthusiasts, and experts out there to share and trade their wares.
‘It is about the feeling of oneness with the machine at a core level, a freedom accentuated by wind hitting your face and chest’, Zohair explains, about his love for bikes. A veteran of several rides, Zohair, a Mechanical Engineer from Muffakham Jah, is a respected name in the bikers’ community, bringing a Hyderabadi flavour to his video reviews of anything and everything that is bike-related. ‘I want people to know how it feels to ride a Hayabusa in the alleys and by-lanes of Old City,’ he chirps. He is one of the first owners of the ER-6n Kawasaki in South India after starting his love affair with bikes with a CBR 250R. His face also lights up at the mention of the RSV4 Aprilia. Zohair represents a microcosm of bike-lovers in Hyderabad who are into premium biking.
India Bike Week will see a frenzy of biking activity including MOD Bike Display, Moto-Art Projects, Burnout and Loudest Bike Competitions and a Special Segment for Biking Innovation. The Bike Build Off and the Film Festival would be capping off the carnival. Bikers can look forward to talks by big trip speakers like Leslie Porterfield dubbed the fastest woman on the planet, Triple World Champion Freddie Spencer, Author and Motorcycling Legend Melissa Pierson, and long-distance bikers like Dhruv Dholakia, Vinod Rawat, Kumar Shah, Ravi Varma and Pooja Dabhi.
The popularity of bikes has surged in recent times in India and so has the stock of intelligible Motovloggers like Zohair who take biking reviews to the new generation hooked to the social media – Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook to a certain extent. Armed with high-end gear including GoPro or SJ7 cams, gimbals etc., motovloggers capture real-time biking action on some of the toughest terrains. At the India Bike Week, Zohair’s ilk would be there to check out stalls and shows from premier names of the biking world like Harley Davidson, BMW and Triumph. Zohair signs off with a hint of sensibility too, urging young people to focus upon content and understanding of bikes rather than on the recording gear which is really expensive. Zohair will be accompanied by another passionate motovlogger from Hyderabad and software engineer by profession, Vikas Rachamalla – reviewers who’ve put the city on the Motovlogging Hall of Fame.