“We were going up a mountainous stretch and were caught up in snow so deep we could barely see where we were heading in the dark,” says Rajat Singh Shekhawat. He and his gang of five other bikers had been held up at immigration at the China-Kyrgyzstan border that had set them eight hours behind schedule. They wouldn’t be making their planned night stop. “It was around -8.5° C and we were around 14,000ft above sea level. Thankfully, a kind nomadic Kyrgyz family took us in for the night. And that is the thing – no matter where you are in the world, no matter what the local language is or how unable you are to speak it, people are all the same. We are all essentially kind and will help each other out when we most need it,” he says.

This is the conclusion the 47-year-old motorbike enthusiast has come to after riding from his hometown of Jaipur to London, UK in the summer of 2018. He had only the year before he bought himself his dream bike, a BMW GS 1200 and was itching to go on a trip half-way around the world when mutual acquaintances put him in touch with colonel Manoj Keshwar, a retired Indian army man with a similar dream. A few WhatsApp messages and a meeting later they hatched a plan and even got together a merry group of bikers from around the country who were also up for adventure.

Shekhawat set off from Jaipur by himself on 23 April and met up with the rest of the gang in Guwahati. The colonel, who planned the whole trip with military precision, would accompany them in a 4×4 vehicle. From Assam, the motorcade made its way to Nagaland and then down to Manipur before heading in to Myanmar. They cut through the country before venturing through Laos, Thailand and finally in to China. The riders rode up the spine of China, past cities such as Chengdu and the Gobi Desert before turning west and making their way to Central Asia. They rode through Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and in to Kazakhstan before entering Russia. From then it was a sprint through the Baltic state of Latvia and Lithuania before barrelling through Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and finally in to France. From their they hopped on the ferry at Calais and landed in Dover, United Kingdom, and made the final sprint to their destination, the biking mecca that is Ace Café in London. The date was 23 June, exactly 2 months and 20,000km since he left the Pink City.

But this was no leisurely holiday, says Shekhawat. “This was a challenge. We were trying to cover this ground in two months’ time. So, we were averaging about 600km a day, riding anywhere between eight and 12 hours,” he says. But that is not to say he did not get to experience the countries they were passing through. After all, who can resist taking the time to enjoy a magical sunrise over Bagan or taking a boat ride on the gorgeous Inle Lake. “Whenever we could, we took a few rest days to enjoy the beautiful places we were passing through. I was so blown away by the natural beauty of our world and the sheer diversity, both in terms of scenery and weather,” Shekhawat says. They encountered desert heat, arctic winds and cold and extreme winds, sometimes on the same day. “I remember this one point in China when the wind suddenly got so strong that we had to abandon our motorbikes and run and take shelter in a culvert,” he says.

If he had to pick the high points it would have to be the untouched, rugged scapes of Kyrgyzstan. “There is nothing quite like it,” he says. “Riding through that scenery, it is something else. And riding is a fairly solitary activity. Even though you are riding in a group, you are by yourself when you are on the motorbike. You are there with just your thoughts with this gorgeous scenery passing you by.”

What could be better than that?