Raid the mountains
Sarah Kashyap is the only Indian female rider to have completed the Raid De Himalaya Extreme Ride
By : kruthi gonwar
Update: 2015-11-03 07:45 GMT
She is all of five feet one inch tall — but drives a 185 kg ‘beast’! “My feet don’t even touch the ground sometimes,” laughs Sarah Kashyap. Despite all the odds (that included breaking her right arm and collar bone), she survived six days of extremely challenging off-road rally raid driving, and became the first ever woman in India to do so. “Over 147 people started this ride, but at the end of six days, only 40 were able to complete it. I was the only female rider. On the last day, I lost control and fell on black ice and my bike’s weight fell on me.
Due to which I broke my collar bone, but the desire to complete the ride kept me going and I drove over 200 kms with a broken arm,” she shares. Raid De Himalaya, which is considered widley to be the second toughest rally across the world, after the Dakar rally in South America, is even listed on the ‘must-do’ list of the FIM (International Motorcycling Federation) calendar. The ride starts from Shimla and has participants for two categories — the Alpine for beginners and the Extreme, which is the expert level with two stages: transport challenge and the competitive stage.
The ride started off at Shimla, then extended to Manali, Dalhousei, Srinagar, Rangdum, Sanskar Valley and finally back to Srinagar. “The toughest bit was from Rangdum to Padoom, which is an off-road continuous stretch of 92 kms. This stage needs a lot of upper body strength, as well as good control. Thanks to several energy drinks, I could pull it off!” she grins.
Sarah underwent rigorous preparation at the National Defence Academy at Pune, where she trained under Major Shridhar, who is an expert on riding at high altitude. Hailing from a military background, she is also trained in martial arts, judo, boxing and club fighting. “Thanks to my dad, who took us to several places across Chandigarh, Kashmir and other regions on his Chetak!” she recalls.
She was 16 when she first started riding a Splendour and she hasn’t looked back since then. “When all my friends invested on make-up or books, I saved all my money for my bike instead!
I never had any sponsors for my rides; I shelled out money from my own pocket. CA Santosh is my role model and I want to do everything he does,” she shares. She has also completed the INRC Circuit in Hyderabad, a ride from Leh to Chandigarh, covering 6,000 km in June last year, from Bengaluru to Ladakh, apart from hundreds of other rides across India and London.
But apart from her biking chronicles, Sarah also has embraced adventurous professional choices — “I worked as a bartender, a copy editor, a social worker, a blogger, a teacher for kids with special needs, and now am currently a manager at the Royal Enfield showroom in Chennai. I have even cut meat at a Pakistani halal shop!”
Sarah was declared as the ‘Rider of the Year 2013’ by the Royal Enfield and was also the first woman biker to be hired as a core rider. “I am not afraid of anything now. Every time I finish a ride, my abilities to learn and explore keep increasing. Women should do it more often. It’s never late to start,” she signs off.