BENGALURU: One is an IT professional and another is known as the GoPro man. The common thread between them is the fact that they are passionate bikers and travel vloggers from the city who have a huge fan base and numerous subscribers to their respective YouTube channels.
Raghavendra Bhandarkar and Arun Kumar (the GoPro man) are the two adventurers who will be participating in the 5th Edition of India Bike Week (IBW), scheduled to take place in November at Goa. Bikers from varied walks of life such as Leslie Portfield, the fastest woman biker in the world, Vinod Rawat, a biker with prosthetic legs and Dilip Muralidharan, a biker with cerebral palsy, to name a few will participate at the festival.
‘I want to record my travel to watch during my old age’
What will you do and are expecting at the IBW?
My main aim to be there is to meet like-minded travellers and hear their stories.
What are some of the places you have been to?
The number of places I have travelled are countless as I ride almost every other weekend either to known places or unknown ones. If you consider the major rides, then I did a 23-day ride to Leh Ladakh and all the way back to Bengaluru, a 16-day ride to Rajasthan and Gujarat, and 8-day trip covering Munnar, Valparai (thrice so far).
How did you get into biking and filming your trips?
- Travelling was a thing for me since my childhood. However, the craze for the bikes started after reading a travelogue by Praveen KM who did an all around India trip on his Karizma. That travelogue changed a lot in me and I started riding. I had a lot of interest in documenting the places I went to, however, it wasn’t possible using just a DSLR and to stop everytime. I got to know about GoPro and saved enough to buy one. I wanted to record all my rides for myself and watch it during my old age. By posting it on YouTube for friends, I got a lot of attention and I started making more videos.
Most memorable trip you keep on going back to?
Rajasthan and Gujarat... it was my first long ride and I was with other bikers. It was pure fun. Waking up every day to ride my motorcycle and living stories on the road is the best thing that can ever happen to me.
Leh Ladakh is the favourite of this ‘BigbangBiker’
Raghavendra started his YouTube channel with the idea of showing India through his eyes. For him, “Motorcycles are like freedom fighters taking on any terrain to keep our sense of fun and freedom alive.”
Talking about the boom in travel vlogging in biking and motorsports, he says that he was glad that India was moving with the technologies like action cameras leading to unhindered expression of one’s passions and feelings while traveling.
“I hope more people will get to know about the existence of such channels of expression,” says Raghavendra. Some of his favourite YouTube channels are that of Casey Neistat, a popular American vlogger and a biker’s must watch, Chase on Two Wheels.
Raghavendra has made numerous trips to varied places since a few years. The trips from Bangalore to Kanyakumari, Bangalore to Mumbai and to Ladakh and Gandikota in Andhra Pradesh are very popular with his fans.
“People want to be explorers and want to travel. They are always looking for information to see if a place is good and safe. I thought, I am an explorer too and I want to show some of the places where I have been on my bikes and let people decide. I also use my channel to share unbiased information about motorcycles, so people know what to buy,”he adds.