Motorcycles and sisterhood: Meet the UAE women’s thriving biking community

The rumbling sound of a bike roaring to life? That's poetry.

That's the sentiment for Richa Touthang, and many of the other bikers in UAE. “That sound, just goes straight to the heart,” she said, momentarily forgetting for a few moments that she was in her Dubai living room, dressed in overalls, watching four cats sprawled on the carpet. In her mind, she was already on the road, clad in her biking gear, and taking us along for the ride with her words and stories.

It’s the closest to flying that she gets, a sentiment that resonates with the other UAE women bikers. You feel and see everything so differently, when you ride through highways, roads, and fields just fly by. You can sense the smallest change in temperature, be it an increase or a drop. You feel the stinging cold air on your face, and sometimes, the sand in your eyes.

It’s freedom on wheels.

Recalling her most cherished experienced that encapsulated a variety of emotions, she says, “In 2022, when we were going to Oman, we got caught in very strong winds. It was so windy when we crossed Hatta. The wind started pushing the bikes, almost on to the other lanes. We were swerving from one lane to the other, left and right….”

Yet, the bikers smiled at each other, as the sisterhood weathered the most difficult winds. “It was incredible,” says Touthang.

‘A bike isn’t something you just get: It’s a passion’

Touthang has been biking since 2018. As she says, it has always been a desire from childhood - a desire that never waned but grew stronger with time. “I’ve always wanted to ride a Harley since the time I can remember,” she says, explaining that she would be inspired by bikers cruising down highways, with their hair flying behind them. Finally, a time came when she didn’t want to wait anymore and decided to buy one. “My husband was scared, but he also knew that I wasn’t asking permission. So, I went ahead, got the licence and bought the bike,” she says. “Whenever people ask my husband why he agreed to ‘get’ the bike for me, he answers, it isn’t something you just get. It comes from passion. And I picked up my bike, and never looked back since.”

For her, it’s a dream that keeps coming true, every day. Touthang showed the cupboard dedicated to all her biking memorabilia, from helmets to the gloves, and outfits. Finally, we get a glimpse of the gleaming, black Harley Davidson bike parked in front of her home. “You should try biking too,” said Touthang, beaming as she noticed me nervously touching the bike as if it was some sort of sentient being that could suddenly zoom away. I muttered that as much as I admired it, and might want it, I didn’t think that I was made for biking. She laughed and said cheerfully, “Look at me. I’m a 46-year-old housewife and I do it. If I can do it, anyone can.”

Her friend Neena D' Souza Barlapudi, shares similar thoughts. Another passionate biker, Barlapudi would be the one to allow her friends to ride pillion during the college days, and would ride freely around town. For several years, she had to put aside her love for biking, till it reignited, and she embarks on different motorbike rides and challenges in UAE, South Africa and India.

Like Touthang and Barlapudi, there are many more, be it teachers, lawyers, doctors and marketing professionals, who resonate with this sentiment and pulsing emotion for biking in UAE. It’s the passion that drives them to the road. It’s freedom, liberation, a challenge that they love taking on. It’s a sense of purpose. Moreover, it goes beyond the biking: It’s the community that they find, along the way, too. There are stories, within the stories.

Going from moms to biker moms

It was love at first sight for Shalini Sankar, an Abu Dhabi-based manager in the leisure industry. In 2017, while sitting in the backseat of a taxi and planning what to make for dinner, she saw the Harley Davidson at the traffic light. Impressed and awestruck with a bike that had style ‘to fill an entire movie scene’, she promised herself, that one day, she would ride it. “But I had a full plate - new job, two kids, single mum life. You know, the whole nine yards.”

Cut to 2019, she wondered what was really stopping her, and it turned out, it was only everyone else’s opinions. “Friends, family - they all had something to say, asking why I wanted a motorcycle, and why I couldn’t just save money for the children. They thought it was a mid-life crisis.” Yet, nothing stopped Sankar: She signed up for classes and after what seemed like an eternity due to Covid-19, she got her licence.

“So, like anyone on a mission, I took to Facebook to hunt down some friendly bikers who could lend me theirs for practice,” she says. After borrowing someone’s KTM 1000cc and riding around every day, she found luck when a 78-year-old biker was selling his bike, and she bought it immediately. “The highway wasn’t exactly like school practice, and my heart was in my throat, the whole time. But I made it. And I felt unstoppable,” she says, adding that she started reaching out to other bikers in the area, hoping to find a community. And she did. “Just to make it even better, my 11-year-old son now rides along with me. It has been the best bonding time ever - just me, my son, and the open road.”

Maybe those who called it a ‘mid-life crisis’ were right, she says. But, it has been the best ‘crisis’ of her life. “It has taught me that if you want something badly enough, you can make it happen - even if it means being the only mom at the driving school or taking the scenic route down Sheikh Zayed Road with your heart in your mouth.”

Similarly, Katrina Evelyn, a Dubai-based entrepreneur and a single mum, decided to take up biking. “I was running between work, home, parent-teacher meetings, dropping the children off for piano classes and football. Sometimes, I started wondering, is this it? Is there nothing else that I can do?” And so, she decided to challenge herself, by deciding to taking up two-wheeler courses. “Everyone thought that I was losing the plot. They thought that I was being impulsive, when I wasn’t. I had thought it through: I wanted to do something for me. I wanted a real challenge, and this was it.”

It has been a victory of sorts. Overcoming the nagging doubts in your head and fears is never easy, especially when you have two children to think about, but Evelyn was determined to emerge triumphant. “I did. I did something for me, for once in my life, and now it has become the best bonding time with my children too, apart from finding fellow bikers, with whom we can do a road trip to Fujairah.”

As Evelyn says with a smile, biking gave her a renewed sense of purpose. It saved her from leading a mechanical life.

Looking for a challenge

Just like Evelyn, Abu Dhabi-based Gabrielle Bou Rached, a Lebanese expat, and the director, Harley-Davidson Owners Group Abu Dhabi, and president Harley-Davidson Owners GCC Council, was looking for something that ‘scared’ her. She recalls, “It was in 2015 that I turned 30. I felt that it couldn’t be just it. I had children, a great husband, a job, but I thought, what next?”

Her mind swivelled to motorcycling, as it had always made her anxious. “I was a paramedic, who would help injured bikers on the road. So that felt like a red line that I could never cross. I had never known any bikers, least of all did I ever want to become a biker, and had always ridden pillion.”

However, the enormity of it all, beckoned to her, and she decided to just go for it. And now, it’s her life, as she says. This passion fills her home, from the red, gleaming bike parked in the driveway, to the helmets lined up on the cabinets. Her children are promising bikers too, she and her husband laugh: They’re already cycling with the same energy, and one day, they want to be bikers.

Yet, it’s not just biking and being on the road that keeps Rached going: It’s the closely-knit group of  friends that she has found.

The camaraderie on the road and beyond

Anyone can buy a bike and ride it, but to be a part of a community, is something else, altogether. You become part of a family, says Rached. Touthang echoes the same sentiment, saying that most of the lifelong friends that she has made, has been from the women’s biking community, including Barlapudi. 

These long rides through deserted highways solidify friendships and sisterhood, making sure that each one has the other’s backs. The closeness isn’t limited to just the road: The women often meet for their children’s birthdays, cooking sprees, and potlucks. “The love that we share for riding, just brings us closer,” says Touthang. “When I started riding for the community, it was just my friend and me, and we were the only two women at the time. We would always call each other before rides, and now we just visit each other for Diwali, Christmas and other festivals. The community grew, and some of them are like my family members, and we train the new ones with practice rides, too.”

Sometimes, it’s the friend that you find in the most life-threatening situation, who stays with you for life. Cora Harnell, an Abu Dhabi-based biker and public relations professional, recalls how she once got caught in an accident, during a solo ride, and there was no help in sight. “I didn’t know how I would get out of that situation. I was lying there on the road, with a damaged bike, and bleeding, praying for some help. So, you can imagine my relief, when I saw a round of 10 women, on their early morning ride, who stopped immediately and got help for me, taking me to the hospital. Today, they’re my family, perhaps more so than my real family too.”

Harnell reveals that she couldn’t ride for several months after her accident, owing to a crippling fear of the road. “It was the community that helped me, overcome my fear, little by little. I would just freeze every time I saw cars come, and they, along with therapists of course, trained me out of that level of emotional paralysis. After two years, only thanks to them, was I able to get back to long rides.”

As the bikers would say, cruising along highways isn’t just about the fun and games: You need to have each other’s backs.

Being a pillar of support to each other on the roads

The bikers make sure that they’re there for each other, through thick and thin. Explaining how they have each other’s backs on the road, Rached says that nobody compromises on safety, during the rides. “The rules are strict, but I think, everyone around me understands that I am not just being difficult, it is for their safety. We have two official rides during the week, which are mostly for socialising, and on Saturday, we have the longer rides, where we enjoy the ride.”

Touthang adds from her experience, “We stress on training, riding with gears, riding safely, distance between riders, how we should ride in formation, so how and when to move around, without hitting someone.” There’s a strong system: You have someone who observes the traffic, another who stops the traffic from coming too close. “You have the activities team, who also plan fun stuff too,” she says.

The motto that runs through all the biking communities: Leave no woman behind, says Harnell. “It’s also that belief that carries us through. It’s a cocktail of sisterhood, passion, and freedom on those wheels and among the women who ride them.”