31.I have conquered the world !- Rishab Gulshan

Rishab,one of the most senior members of the group has written this post. He is a true connoisseur of bikes. He is a partner with Boston Consulting Group, resides in Gurgaon with his wife and new born baby. A 2011 Gixxer,Street Fighter and H-D 48 keeps him company.

I have conquered the world !-


Very few people would be able to make that statement…..Gengis Khan, Julius Cesar, Alexander the great to name a few. In a different way Kapil Dev, Mahindra Singh Dhoni and all world cup winning cricket captains can make that claim. Tom Cruise, Daniel Radcliffe and all the big Hollywood starts can also stake claim to that. In yet another way Edmond Hillary and several others who have conquered Mt Everest will also be right in saying so….you get the drift of what I'm trying to say.

What does conquering the world mean? I guess it means different things to different people….to Gengis Khan it would have meant owning all the wealth of the world….to Kapil Dev it would have meant being the captain of the best cricket team in the world…..to Tom Cruise it means being loved by people all over the world and to Edmond Hillary it would have meant being on top of the world.

So what does all this have to do with super-biking? We will get to that in just a few minutes.



Ever since I was a little boy, I have been fascinated with cars and bikes. As a 1 yr old toddler I would tell my Mom to open the door of my toy car so that I could sit in it and drive it around…..at the age of 5 I had over 500 "dinki" cars and bikes and if my Mom is to be believed I could tell the name of each and every one….at the age of 10 I assembled a car from a lego set meant for age 15 and above and at the age of 15 my cousin (god bless him) taught me to ride a bike (the mighty Yamaha Rx 100). So it's pretty evident that I was born a petrol-head.

It wasn’t till the age of 20 (1998) that I owned my first 2 wheeler….an LML Vespa scooter (ya ya..I know its not a petrol head type of vehicle to own)…I was in 3rd year of college and my dad refused to buy me a bike saying it was too risky (when he himself owned a Yezdi as a young Army officer), but since I was not buying (technically dad was buying) I didn’t have much of a say in it and welcomed what I got. It was a nice enough two wheeler and for a year I drove it every day from Lajpat Nagar to SRCC (about 100 Kms round trip) and loved it…the freedom of being on a 2 wheeler was awesome….and my fascination for cars and bikes became even stronger. Move forward a couple of years to 2000 and fresh out of business school and into a job I went and bought a nicely maintained RD 350..a dream I had cherished for many years. It was an awesome machine and I had it for over 4 years…rode it every day to office and to meet my now darling wife after work. It was my pride and joy and no amount of maintenance issues could take away the joy of owning an RD. In 2004, we moved to the US for a few years and I happily gave away my RD to my older cousin (the same guy who taught me how to ride a bike).



While in the US, my affair with cars and bikes reached a different level. I was there for about 4 years and fortunate enough to own some really amazing cars during that time period….it started with an E46 BMW M3, then a C6 Corvette, followed by a Porsche Cayman S and finally a Lexus IS-F (boy was I fortunate !). Each of those cars was absolutely brilliant. I would drive to work every day (when in town)…a 100 mile round trip and go for a 200-400 mile drive almost every weekend with the wife. I did a couple of track days in the C6 and Cayman S and can still feel the goose bumps from doing 90 mph 60 degree banked turns at the Texas Motor Speedway. During those years I started appreciating the technical aspects of being a petrol-head….terms like horse-power, torque, compression, intake, exhausts, tuning, suspension, traction control, under/over steer, heel and toe etc all started making sense to me. Being an inquisitive sort of guy, I spent a little bit of time understanding these concepts and how I could apply them in real life without going bonkers. While in the US, my fascination with super-bikes also started. I would see these bikers zip past me on the freeway when I would be doing speeds much above the legal limits. Hence the "kida" to get into super-bikes started. I tried to buy a super-bike there but one had to go through a motor-cycle driving school and apply for a special license all of which would take 6-8 months. I started the process, but fate had something else in store for me.



In 2008, I moved back to India for some personal reasons and so the dream of owning a super-bike was put on hold. 3 months later one of my friends introduced me to a guy who had a R1 for sale….I was curious and so went to check it out. As luck would turn out I ended up buying the bike and thus started my affair with super-bikes. It was a 2006 Raven Black R1 – what a beauty! Over the next few months I rode alone every Saturday and Sunday morning to get comfortable with how to handle a super-bike in our Indian conditions. Then another very fortunate incident happened. One fine Sunday morning, as I was riding alone on NH 8, a super-bike (that I later discovered was the Hayabusa) zipped past me…I got excited to see another Super-bike and starting pulling up to catch the guy….to my surprise he had stopped by the side of the highway and so I went up to him to introduce myself and just as I approached him, I heard the thundering of what must have been 15+ super-bikes. That was my first interaction with GODS. I met Doc (Dr Arun) and introduced myself and he welcomed me with open arms into the group. It was an amazing feeling that day…riding is fun, but riding with a bunch of guys who you connect with at some level is a whole different level of fun. Over the past 3 years I have been regularly riding with GODS. Besides the regular Sunday rides, I've done 4-5 outstation trips the longest being a 1700 trip to Spiti (the valley of GODS). I have gotten to know a few guys from the group really well and they are like my brothers today. I have learnt two important lessons being part of this group – 1. Ride long and not fast and 2. Control the bike and don’t let it control you.

I cant wait to ride every Sunday morning….to feel the wind in my face….to enjoy that rush of power at the gentle twist of my wrist….to hear the roar of those exhausts…to feel the planet stopping power of those brakes….to enjoy the razor sharp handling of the chasis….and most importantly to crack a few jokes with my buddies.

That's when I feel I've conquered the world…..