INDIAN MOTOBIKERS

"I drive down the narrow roads in Goa, South of India, and I come across all sorts of vehicles and motorists, proud of their Enfields in their different styles wich are manually customized by the skilled local mechanics."

Goa. India. Marzo 2009

EVERYBODY MAKES WAY FOR THE BULLET

Pixels are pushing pencil, paper and brush to the background. Over the last decade the implementation of

information technology has decisively transformed graphic design in the west. India’s growing economy is rapidly 

catching up with the advertising industry. Once ubiquitous hand painted banners and posters and practically all 

other material characteristic of its graphic landscape is being replaced by digitally designed and printed material.

The upcoming changes in India, urged graphic artist Merinero go to India and stroll through this vanishing graphic landscape in search for graphicwallahs, silkscreen workshops, and masters of hand painted typography.

I found this graphicwallas in the Margao and Mapusa outskirts (Goa, India) in March 2005 but unfortunately the year after they were changed by ones digitally made. 

SPRAY PAINT

Keeping on with the  bike-world graphic prodution fun. You can have here a hint of the process.

Photos by Angel de la Maza en La Boca del Lobo, cultural space. Madrid.

CASTROL WINS

A friend lend me a couple of 1956's numbers of "The motocycle" found in an long forgotten pile of old newspapers. I will be sharing here some of its pages.

Spanish grand prix 1956.

RICKSAWS

An auto rickshaw or three-wheeler (tuk-tuk, trishaw, auto, rick, autorick, or rickshaw in popular parlance) is a vehicle and a way of transport for private use and as a kind of taxi. It is a motorized version of the traditional ricksaw  a small three-wheeled cart operated by a single individual. Auto rickshaws can be found in many Asian countrys.

In the begining the motobike adaptation was just a change of the back wheel for a two wheels axe. Later on the alterations were aplied mainly on the front. The traditional way of driving a bike changed then for a more confortable and secure sitting position inside a cabin.

         

The ricksaw can be used as a van, semitrailer or passenger carrier. It is a very reliable vehicle for urban goods delivering by way of its cheap maintenance, easy mobility and small dimensions. Here you got a few models that I found on Bombay and Pajim streets during my last planet-India trip.

MECHANICALS WORKS

My work place in Bombay is situated very near the motobyke mechanics, dealers and spares sellers area Everything from the bikers world is there, on those few blocks. I cross them everyday on my way to work that become a little longer to enjoy the pleasure of founding out something new every morning.  I chat for a short while with the three best mechanics in the city. Here you can meet my favourites Anthony, Chottu and Mhamou. Later on I will show you on detail some bykes restaured by them. At the moment you can enjoy yourselves playing to figure out which kind of motobikes got them on hand. 

                     

Chotto autoworks

                      

Mahmood motorcycles

Anthony and Co mechanics

BY THE N101

LONG RIDE

By Angel de la Maza

The old single cilinder engines had long gears. An insistent and tireless "bang, bang, bang" of long distance destinations riding down endless roads, and unpredictable journeys through undiscovered places.

Its the long steady ride, no hurries, on motorbikes that escape time and fashion, for the pure pleasure of travelling, permeated by what surrounds us, the most important things: the journey and the motorbike.
The journey and the motorbike are shown as a way to enjoy and interpret freedom, more within us than shared, in a world that is more and more frenzied, media-centered and gregarious.
Fortunately, there are still lost corners to explore and time to reflect. Time to do things in a different way, to discover distant places and dream of old stories that happened in yellow pages of old magazines.

Although everything has been invented, we still have time. The eagerness for adventure met the ideal vehicle in motorbikes, the most romantic invention of the twentieth century. A mechanized chant to freedom, an unmistakeable touch and smell, like a unique mechanical horse, feared and admired, but wonderful, that opened the door to our imagination and unrestricted freedom. This long ride that starts here, is a broad landscape like the horizontal vision of our eyes that reaches where it mingles with the horizon line, the line that separates reality from dreams. This is the reason of our meeting: to go beyond the horizon riding ancient or new saddles, covering the world of our dreams, of our journeys on the back of our favourite motorbikes. The ones we own, the ones we wish we owned, or the ones we will own.

Here is where our journey starts, this long tour that will take us down incredible paths, with once in a lifetime characters that have made the trip of their life, and the amazing possibilitie of becoming the main character of those road trips down ususpected paths.

You can find all this, and who knows if maybe more, in this blog we offer you, turning this occasion into a party you are all invited .

We are on our way, with our luggage ready for a long distance trip to an unknown destination and our long gear motorbyke, calm, tireless and perfectly tuned up.

Castrol Wynn's

Triumph Twin

dirt track