Rohith Subramanian’s love for motorcycles goes back to the very day he was born. On that day, his father happened to be in Hubli, and he rode his bike all the way to Chennai. “Inside the family, the joke still goes that maybe that’s where the love for motorcycles was born in me,” begins Rohith, who will soon embark on a five-month journey on his Royal Enfield across 25 countries in Europe.
While we get gifts from parents if we score well in exams, Rohith’s story is quite different. “The first motorcycle I got was, surprisingly, when I scored a zero in one of my exams in 12th standard. It was an RX135. Sometime later, I was backpacking in Leh, and a friend, whose workshop I worked at, gave me his Royal Enfield for giving him a lot of sales. Although I struggled a lot handling that bike, it made me fall in love with riding in that terrain!” says Rohith.
Rohith, who prefers longer trips, started riding for a living in January last year — “I did a pan-India trip where I rode around all the states and UTs in India, after which I rode around 10 southeast Asian countries,” he says.
While a Europe trip is still considered a luxury affair for many, Rohith begs to differ — “Europe is an ideal destination because you need just one visa to visit 20 different countries. Tourism in Europe is backpacker friendly. If you plan things right, Europe can be one of the cheapest continents to travel around. It depends on whether you are ready to stay at cheaper hostels, eat street food and so on. Border crossing in Europe is fairly easy. Crossing Spain’s border to enter Portugal is as simple as entering Karnataka from Tamil Nadu!” he quips
Talking about borders, Rohith shares one of his predicaments from his southeast Asia trip —where he had to push his bike for many miles in Cambodia — as he lost his bike’s keys in the Vietnamese border and was not allowed to retrieve it!
Rohith will begin his European journey in Barcelona, Spain after which he will travel to Portugal, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and then another 10 countries later on.
Other than riding, he will also be shooting many videos for his social media followers. Skydiving, scuba diving, bungee jumping, taking part in a few local sports, catching up with a lot of football matches, doing a couple of treks and above all, meeting interesting people is also on his list.
Talking about the biggest takeaway from such trips, he says, “You get to know yourself better, open up your mind — meeting different people helps you get different perspectives. When you travel a lot, you get to listen and understand yourself, and that’s the beauty of any kind of travel.”
