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The Bhutan Dragons Motorcycle Club: what’s that noise?

28 November 2008

Lately, if you have been awakened by the collective roar of a Royal Enfield 500cc engine with riders clad in leather with a dragon’s crest and the credo, “Bhutan Dragons Motorcycle Club,” do not be alarmed. It’s a group of men in their mid-to-late thirties living the Robert M. Pirsig dream, with a difference.

They were buddies since kindergarten, mimicking bikers. As teenagers, they became ardent motorcyclists, testing the trails off the beaten path on scooters and dirt bikes. Now they are in their thirties. Yet the passion has not ebbed, if anything, it has given birth to the kingdom’s first motorcycle club.

Thinley Wangchuck, Agay Tandin, Chimi Dorji, Tenzin Namda and Tshering Tashi are the founders of what is today a charitable club known as the Bhutan Dragons Motorcycle Club. It’s open to anyone with an Enfield. The club was formally inaugurated in an initiation ceremony that had 12 riders biking from Thimphu to Paro, with 10 members awaiting them at Chhuzomsa. The club was born, on October 17, in a garage in Paro- surrounded by autumn fields and golden rice stocks, amidst monks, gongs and bikes.

This is what makes the club unique. Where motorcycle clubs around the world are associated with gangland activities, the Dragons’ adage is, “love to ride and ride to love with a charitable swerve and a responsible clutch.” In Paro, members rode to a monastery high up on a ridge to pay their respects and to distribute jackets for the young novices studying there. Agay Tandin, the club’s president and a life-long motorcycle enthusiast, even adopted one of the young novices, who are all orphans.

It is this philanthropic part of the club, a central theme of the club’s ‘charter’ that makes Bhutan Dragons an inimitable motorcycle club indeed. The club has close to 40 members and counting; a Japanese woman, an Englishman and a German bring some added flavour. A week back, a large group of riders from Germany were the guests of honour as they were received all the way from Phuentsholing to the club’s Thimphu house, known as the “Thimphu Chapter” for a member’s initiation.

The club has two more ‘chapters’ in Paro and in Phuentsholing. Thinley, perched on his iron horse, said that one of the aims of the club is to have a ‘chapter’ in every dzongkhag and memto change the stereo-typical image of bikers. Biking, he said, can be, “cool, fun and socially beneficial too as we have learnt. When we ride, we designate specific schools or villages in specific dzongkhags, contributing what we can to the community from the club’s funds, which come in the form of membership fees and donations.”

The club rides formally thrice a year and as many times as is possible casually, depending largely upon free time, since the majority of the members are well-cocooned family men.

When they do get together for the rides decked in their leathers and the club’s colours, the men turn into excitable boys once again. Only this time they get to actually ride the book. ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ has indeed taken root in Bhutan. So if you see a bunch of bikers manoeuvring the highways, give them a smile and a wave, along with the right of the road. For the Dragons have rules and regulations, a charter and a code of ethics, that states that all members must ride responsibly, without intoxicants and bring whatever help they can to wherever they are riding, along with an annual contribution of Nu 6,000. A small fee for a ride that is thrilling, free and full of camaraderie.

By Jurmi Chhowing

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Posted by Bhutan Observer · Filed Under Sports 

Comments

2 Responses to “The Bhutan Dragons Motorcycle Club: what’s that noise?”

  1. its very good to have biker across the country on December 1st, 2008 2:28 pm

    i am fren of bullet bike and i would like to joint in the group.

  2. Santanu Banerjee on January 6th, 2009 11:31 am

    I need the address of the group including email address. Can It be provided to me

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