In 1990, Deepak Kamath’s mother bought him a second-hand Yezdi from one of her colleagues at Syndicate Bank. By this point, young Kamath had already proven that he had a taste for adventure, having completed a pan-India cycling expedition with the NCC. He also participated in a similar cycling expedition around the world, but was unable to complete it after his bicycle got stolen at the Greece-Bulgaria border, requiring him to hitch-hike to Italy and head home.
Now, with a motor powering his wheels, he reached out to Ideal Jawa in Mysore to work on this 1979 Yezdi and did a trip with the intention of reaching the famed Khardung La pass, but was prevented from proceeding beyond Srinagar by landslides. Soon after, Jawa lent him their own bike and he set off from Kanyakumari to the mountains again, this time attaining the heights of Khardung La, and crossing over into Nepal. This 11,180-kilometre trip earned him a spot in the 1992 Limca Book of Records.
His real claim to fame came a couple of years later, when his competitive spirit led him to get on a motorcycle and decide to circumnavigate the globe. “I had been following a couple from Kolkata, who had gone around the world in their car in around 53 days,” says Kamath. “This record was subsequently broken and later reclaimed by them. At this point, I reached out to the Ideal Jawa management and expressed my interest in going around the world in 60 days on a motorcycle.”
It didn’t take long for him to get a response, seeing as this was the time when efficient 100cc motorcycles were entering the market and eating into the share of Yezdi motorcycles. He set out in 1994, with ride partner GH Basavaraj, and covered 42,000km around the world in 47 days.
By 1996, Kamath got married and stayed largely out of the limelight, as far as insane rides were concerned. Until 2017 that is, when he, along with partners Sudhir Prasad and Dilip Bhat, completed a Trans-Siberian Odyssey on Bajaj Dominars, riding from the Pamir Highway to Magadan in East Russia.
“My inspirations were Dan Popescu, a Romanian rider who travelled Russia’s Road Of Bones during winter, where temperatures as low as -72 have been recorded, and Hubert Kriegel, a 71-year-old Frenchman who is still on the road as we speak, whose exploits are documented at www.thetimelessride.com . I met them at an annual event named Motorcycle Travellers Meet, and later connected with Sudhir and Dilip on the Facebook group,” Kamath explains.
Having been in the process of planning a ride from Moscow to Magadan himself, he joined up with the two, and together they approached Bajaj, since Kamath had ridden a then newly-launched Dominar on a previous trip, to help with the formalities for international passage for motorcycles, a process which is prohibitively expensive for most. The company provided them with stock Dominars, which were then modified with off-road tyres and accessories by the trio, before they set off in May 2017.
The trip saw them explore much territory previously left mostly uncharted by Indian bikers. “Most Indian motorcyclists go up to Tashkent in Uzbekistan and then turn West towards Europe, but we ventured on to the Road of Bones, which consists of a 3,000-km Federal Highway and an old summer route that is an adventure motorcyclist’s paradise.” Kamath and company ventured onto the summer route at Kyubeme and rode up to Tomtor, with the intention of rejoining the Federal Highway at Kadykchan, but were forced to turn back by high water levels along the route. Kamath also ventured into the Charyn Canyon gorge in Kazakhstan, another difficult proposition on a two-wheeler, en route to the trip’s end at Magadan in Eastern Russia.
Kamath is still getting used to the exposure he is receiving after the journey. “When I went around the world in 1995, I did not get one-tenth of this attention. Things have changed a lot,” he says, adding that while adventure motorcycling is gaining ground in India, people should do it for the right reasons.
“A lot of people, when they don’t get leave, quit their jobs and go on trips. Then they take and post beautiful pictures, which encourage others to do the same, not realising that the poster may be struggling to make ends meet after the trip. Balance is important. I’d advice people to use their weekends, not for breakfast rides with groups, but for trips with a loved one,” he says, pointing out that he now explores the country with his wife on a Benelli 600GT, that she helped him acquire, highlighting the importance of having a supportive family.
