Why Indian women are riding motorcycles like never before — and what they face on the road

“In a car, you watch the landscape through a window. On a bike, you feel the change in temperature, the wind, the surface of the road. You’re in it,” says actor-producer Gul Panag, who famously had a bikers-only doli for her wedding to Rishi Attari in 2011.

Ask any biker what it means to have the rubber hit the road, it’s not the two tons of steel, the foam padding, the safety glass or the full-face helmets that provide the safety. It’s that inside feeling of being alive, that twist of the throttle that is both an art and a release, that comfort of fellow bikers that makes all the difference.

Drop a gear

Anjaly Rajan was seven when she rolled out her mother’s Kinetic Honda. “I always loved bikes,” she says. Today, alongside her jewellery business, she runs a female motorcycling club, Riderni, which started in Gujarat in 2012 and is now based in Kochi. “The first person I taught biking to was my mother. If she could do it, anyone could,” says Anjaly. “Biking has always been a part of my life and no matter what happens, it will be there,” she adds. She started with a 125cc Super Splendour and recently added a 937cc Ducati Monster to her collection.

Anjaly Rajan on her Ducati Monster

Her previous partner, who didn’t love bikes, thought that because she was a woman, she would give up riding. The 38-year-old has decided to spend her life being single. “Some people feel that female bikers are outcasts, that they smoke, drink, and lead a certain lifestyle,” she says.
But no woman is apologising. “I call my bike the beast and I truly feel like the beast when I’m riding it,” says Gurgaon-based Dr Neharika Yadav about her Ducati Panigale V4. “Our motorcycles are our family members, our life partners, our better halves,” adds the dentist and a professional superbike racer. Gul says, “I also love how much riding asks of you. Your hands, eyes, balance and judgment have to work together. If my mind is wandering, the bike has a way of telling me to come back. That complete sense of being present is a large part of why I ride.”

Dr Neharika Yadav on her Ladakh trip

Country roads that don’t take them home

Kalyani Potekar, India’s fastest woman motorcycle racer, started riding in 2010, when seeing a woman on a motorcycle was still unusual. “Today, many more women are riding, touring, racing and participating in the motorcycling community. There is still a long way to go but women are increasingly claiming the handlebars,” she says. She was nine when she first learned to ride, watching her father race on dirt tracks in Indore. She went on to race professionally. She divides her riding life into two parts: “Racing is for my goals; touring is for my soul,” she says.

Kalyani Potekar at the California Superbike School

The riding bug is spreading, with riders from Visakhapatnam, Pune, Bengaluru, Assam, Mumbai, Delhi and other cities, hitting the track.

Anita Krishnan, 43, who has spent almost 10 years leading tours and is national president of Women’s International Motorcycling Association’s Indian division, says biking also brings in adventure. “Exposure to adventure doesn’t come naturally to Indian women because of societal conditioning and responsibilities,” she says. It led her to co-found Moto Gypsy Adventure Tours, an independent motorcycle touring company that focuses on adventure tours for women, two years ago. Women from all backgrounds, professions, and ages have been a part of their adventures. In one of the tours to Ladakh, with mostly women over 40, upon reaching the top of Khardung La Pass, they were joyous, she says, “That sense of achievement is different.”

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Anita Krishnan

Motorcycling isn’t conventional and sometimes convincing your family to go itself is the first hurdle. Anita has met women from conservative families who prefer that they ride only in women groups and not with men.

Community matters

What happened to Shivani (Sia) Chauhan recently, in some form has happened to most women who ride a motorcycle in this country. She was chased by four men in a car for almost two kilometres, while on her way to a Gurugram cafe. The car rammed into her, making her fall off the bike, dragging the bike across the road. Much of this was captured because of Shivani’s moto-vlogging.

Maral Yazarloo-Pattrick, an Iranian biker based in India who has ridden across 70 countries, calls it the trigger for the male ego. “On a bike, people’s behaviour can change when they realise I am a woman,” she says. She founded a riders’ tribe called the Lady Riders of India almost 10 years ago, with two requirements — a 650cc motorcycle and 10,000 kilometres ridden.

Dr Maral Yazarloo-Pattrick

India has several women’s biking clubs, with The Bikerni, started by Urvashi Patole and Firdaus Shaikh in 2011, being possibly the first. Today, it has over 2,500 members across 17 chapters in different states. It was also the inspiration for Taapsee Pannu’s production, Dhak Dhak (2023).
“When I was younger, a lot of it was the excitement of discovering that I could ride this machine.

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Now I’m much more attentive to technique, the bike, the road, my own fatigue and the decisions I make along the way. I think I enjoy riding more because of that. I still feel free, but I have a much better sense of what it takes to keep riding,” says Gul, who got curious about motorcycles in college in Patiala. She was riding a Kinetic Honda when a cousin left his Bullet 350 in their garage and asked her to start it now and then, so the battery wouldn’t die. Before long, she was riding it to college.

Gul Panag

To her, such biker communities are important. “When a woman sees other women riding, she can picture herself doing it too. The community also gives riders a place to share knowledge and encourage one another. I look forward to the day when ‘rider’ is enough of a description for any of us. Until then, support matters,” she says.

The Tvarra Research Centre’s India Women Rider Safety & Mobility Report 2026 — a survey of 1,018 women across India, including 542 regular riders — found that 72.7 per cent of women riders report that larger vehicles disregard them, cutting in, crowding, and overtaking without room.

It is also why Maral does not want people to immediately recognise that she is a woman rider. Being in full gear is non-negotiable for her, both for road safety and protection as a woman.

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From the saddle to the handlebar

Then there is literally, the art of motorcycle maintenance that women bikers stay mindful of. For Hyderabad-based Leena Reddy, a banker, who bought a Royal Enfield Hunter 350, two years ago, after her second pregnancy, it was about navigating the 40km trip to work daily. She now teaches women to ride geared motorcycles and lift their own bikes, across Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, through her club, SheMoto. Her sons are proud of her. The elder one, 10, tells everyone at the gym that his mother is a biker and rides with other women. He wants to learn to ride, too, she says, but only after he turns 18.

Leena Reddy

“I had just learned to ride Rishi’s BMW F650 Funduro. It felt taller and heavier, and I dropped it more than once. This was back in 1999. What stays with me is learning to pick it up myself. I couldn’t just heave it upright. I had to stop, work out the technique, use my legs and take my time. The first time I managed it unaided, I felt ridiculously pleased with myself. Then I got back on and rode. I suppose that bike taught me that dropping a motorcycle doesn’t have to be the end of the ride. You work out what happened, get it back on its wheels, and carry on,” says Gul.
But what happens when a bike breaks down in the middle of the road? Most bikers know how to handle the basics, like punctures, battery problems or chain-related concerns. Some, like Kalyani, carry toolkits, besides keeping contacts of nearby service centres handy. “Some bikers and locals have even offered help or invited us to stay with them. For me, that is one of the most beautiful parts of our journey,” she says.