Hello X BHPians

First of all thanks to the Mods for approving my registration. I have been following xBHP for long time now and thought it should be a right time to make it official by registering with the community.

Bikes have been an integral part of my life since very young age as i got my first bike at the age of 12 and it was a Hero Puch Shakti . I know a lot of you might not consider it a bike now but at the age of 12 to me it was no less than CB750. I was riding REs before i got my own bike. In the following years i did own couple of more bikes like RX100 etc but it was in 2003 i bought RE Electra which i fell in love with instantly and it is still a part of my garage (Just couln't let it go). After 22 years of riding REs i have recently booked a KTM Duke 390 2017 and hopefully will get the delivery by end of May'17.

I use to ride quite often till 2005 when i met a near fatal bike accident in which i almost lost my right hand and which left me on bed rest for almost 6 months. Post the accident there was a big no on my long rides but they knew i could not live without my bikes hence my RE was with me everywhere i went . Life caught up and i got busy with my work and extremely frequest foreign travel because of the nature of my job only to realise in 2015 that one of my friend with whom i planned a bike ride to Manali-Leh-srinagar circuit in 2005 actually completed that ride and the pics were irresistable. It was a wakeup call for me as those pics actually make me realise that i was missing an emotion in my life for past 10 years , an emotion which we call "Riding". I decided to celebrate a decade of my life changing accident by completing a ride which i could not complete 10 years back because of it but i did not wanted to give a heart attack to my mother and hence did not tell them i am riding to Leh but instead told them that we will be hiring a Taxi from Manali. I applied for leaves and started working on my bike as it was just lying in my garage for past 5 years and i use to take it out only for leisure rides once in a month maybe. I posted the ride on Royal Enfield website and got 4 more friends to join in for a ride . Being frank with you i was scared to the core as i was not even riding 35kms a month, my right hand which is my main hand is only 70% of what it was 10 years back and i planned to complete a 3500 kms ride in 18 days. To cut the story short we did start the ride on 3sept'15 and completed it on 21st Sept'15 in Amritsar







. It was the end of the ride but to me it was a start of my riding days again. I now ride often and plan to make 2 more long rides this year on my newly acquired Duke 390 to Zanskar Valley and North East and Bhutan.

I hope to contribute to this community and also to learn from the experts

Thanks
P.T