In 2019, when Vishakha Fulsunge was in college, she was riding her motorcycle near the Belgaum toll booth in Karnataka, when she heard a puppy crying near the service road. “I went closer and saw a group of men playing catch with the pup. I kept my helmet on like I usually do – there’s a camera in it and I can make calls if needed.” She went up, asked for the puppy. They refused.

Fulsunge managed to grab the animal and clean its wounds. The men snatched the puppy back, she reached for it again. “I noticed the men slowly gathering around me. There were about 11 of them, they’d been drinking. It started raining. They couldn’t understand Hindi; I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I just knew I needed to get out of there.”

One of the men pulled out a knife.

Fulsunge ran to her motorcycle, turned on her headlights, and sped off with the puppy inside her raincoat. The men chased her in an SUV well after she crossed the toll, in the dark downpour. She finally stopped at a tea stall, ran inside and told the people there what was happening. The car stopped too, but ultimately turned around and left.

To most women travelling solo across India, an incident like this is enough to reconsider travelling alone altogether. For Fulsunge, 30, it’s just another bump in the road. She’s been motorcycling long distances by herself since 2016 and covers terrains that few dare to explore. She rode 1,800 kms from Mumbai to Vishakhapatnam in one go in 2019. She then crossed the sea on ship and rode to Andaman. The India Book of Records credits her as the first woman to “ride across the Andaman Islands on her own bike”. It also records her as the “first female rider to cross the Bay of Bengal” in 2019, (no woman had taken a motorcycle over sea and ridden to the mainland before) and the first and fastest woman rider to complete the Narmada Parikrama on a motorcycle in 2020. She completed a full circle around the Narmada river; riding 4,600 km.

Fulsunge is, on average, on the road 300 days of the year. “Anything can happen when I leave the house, and not just because I’m on a motorcycle. All I can do is be prepared,” she says. One way is to track every journey – for herself and the world. Fulsunge has been on social media since 2017, and has 1.1 million subscribers on YouTube and 989K followers on Instagram (@ridergirlvishakha). When travelling, she vlogs almost daily, documenting everything from beautiful views and showing off her vehicle to crying in frustration and flipping off terrible drivers. It’s an unfiltered look at life on the road, especially for women.

Revving up

Fulsunge clearly remembers the first time she knew she wanted to ride a motorcycle. It was the late ’90s. The family – her father, mother, younger brother and herself – were off to a temple in Mumbai. They were all on the family Lambretta; Vishakha, five, standing up front. “We were late,” she recalls. “Papa was speeding. He was rolling the throttle. I put my hand on his and felt it accelerate. I still get goosebumps. I’ve never once thought that girls can’t ride motorcycles. I just knew, if I ever ride a one, I’m going to be the best.”

By the time she was 13, her dad, Dhanraj, was teaching her how to ride that scooter, holding the seat as she rode around in circles. Like so many siblings, she and her brother, Pawan, would sneak out for to ride in secret. They got away with it for two years before their father found out.

Fulsunge lost her father to Covid in 2020. “He pretended not to be interested in my riding,”she says. She only found out when she picked up his phone and saw that all her videos had been viewed. One of the last things he said to her was “Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing right”. It’s the kind of fuel that fills the heart, not the tank.

Her mother, Rohini, has been supportive of Fulsunge’s unusual profession. “She mortgaged her gold bangles so I could buy my own motorcycle, a KTM Duke 390, in Class 11,” Fulsunge recalls. The vehicle, which she’s named Kashish, has clocked about three lakh kilometres so far. And Fulsunge’s mother still manages her social media and collaborations while her daughter is on the road. She also packs rotis and dal or theplas for the meals ahead.

“When I started, people would tell her that this is a man’s field, that I was better off married,” Fulsunge fumes. From strangers, it was no surprise. But when relatives started misinforming her mother that riding a bike would interfere with having children, Fulsunge realised that some roadblocks have nothing to do with actual roads.

The all-male moto vlogging community was hostile too. “They trolled me. They made fun of me. There was a WhatsApp group, Vloggers of Mumbai, which they didn’t let me join. They ignored me at events,” she says. “I’d stand there alone, the only girl among the boys.” She approached popular content creators for collabs. Nobody agreed.

Rocky road

On trips, she’s cautious. Every time she leaves the house, Fulsunge reminds her mother and brother where the paperwork for her insurance and vehicle care are located, and how much money she has in her bank account. On the road, she doesn’t bother with pepper spray. “By the time you find it, it’ll be too late,” she scoffs. Instead, she has a GPS tracker, and Google Maps activated, sending location data back home in real time . She’s spent some nights at local dhabas. “I only stop where there’s a lot of light. And I sit outside, never inside. If anything happens, I need to be able to run to my bike.” And she rides with AirTags on her motorcycle and in her jacket – who knows what’s lurking in a bathroom in the middle of nowhere?

But no matter where she may be, Fulsunge stops to help animals in need. Even if that isn’t always the safest decision.

Shock absorbers

Riding alone across India isn’t always about safety. It simply isn’t geared towards women travellers. In the hills, homestays are excellent bets. Hotels at far-flung locations, if they’re not dodgy, are often dirty. “I’m on a budget, so I sometimes compromise on comfort,” she says. She also carries her own sheets, sleeping on the floor rather than paying ₹500 more on fancier lodgings next door. On the Narmada Parikrama in 2020, some hotels refused to rent a room to a woman travelling alone. “They thought I was going to get ‘customers’ back to the room,” she says wryly.

The AirTags track those bathroom breaks – but often there are just no restrooms on a long journey. Until about two years ago, Fulsunge would just not drink water on long trips. “What I do now, is seek out petrol pumps. I empty myself and fill up my bike,” she says, laughing.

Bigger picture

Why do it, against such baffling odds, then? “Once you fall in love with this, there’s no going back,” says Fulsunge, simply. Plus, the years have brought a kind of vindication. When she reached 50K followers on YouTube, the male moto vloggers who ignored her quickly warmed up, asking to make videos with her. She refused. Those toxic relatives now want to take pictures with her. “They call my mother to gossip. She ignores them,” she says.

And she isn’t quite done cruising past stereotypes. Last year, Fulsunge got down on one knee and proposed to her mountaineer boyfriend, Rajat Pratap Singh, outside Kedarnath temple in Uttarakhand. Fans, both men and women, tell her she inspired them to learn how to ride a motorcycle, or that their parents relented after watching her videos. “I’m not here to change people’s minds, but it’s definitely happening,” she says.

And she still has her father’s Lambretta. “I’ll give up everything and sleep on it if I have to, but I’ll never sell it.”

DOUBLE TAKE

“The first time that people realised that I was a woman on a motorcycle, I was riding from Mumbai to Lonavala, 80 kms away in 2013. I was in full riding gear on the Duke 390, but near Bushi Dam, a bunch of boys ran after me the way kids do. They were about to say something when I took off my helmet. They were like ‘Oye! Yeh Duke-wala nahi, Duke-wali hai!’”

These days, she lets her brightly coloured ponytail dangle from her helmet. It’s stopped random men slapping her on the back, the way they usually do with men.

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