xBhp

Overview

xBhp is an English-language motorcycling lifestyle magazine published from New Delhi, together with the large online biker community of the same name. Its full styling expands, in its subscription descriptions, to Extra Braking Horse Power. The magazine is unusual among Indian motoring titles because it grew out of a community rather than a publishing house: xBhp's own site carries the tagline Since '02, marking its life as an online community of Indian motorcyclists long before the print magazine appeared, and describes itself as different things to different people, a close-knit national community of bikers, India's motorcycling lifestyle magazine and a place to make like-minded biker friends.

The magazine's philosophy has a name: i, the Biker. In xBhp's own explanation, the philosophy means putting the biker before the bike. Machines matter, but the rider's journey, judgement, safety and story come first. That single idea distinguishes xBhp from review-driven automobile magazines and shapes everything it publishes, from travelogues and photography to its celebrated long-distance road trips.

From Online Community to Print Magazine

xBhp began as an online community, and its own account of the magazine's launch explains why print followed. Translating its success as an online community, and with the express purpose of providing the Indian motorcycling milieu a larger, more concrete and stronger platform in print media, xBhp launched a bi-monthly magazine on 27 September 2010, beginning with its October 2010 inaugural issue. The print launch was staged in Delhi, where the magazine was presented to Indian bikers at a launch event, with a further launch following in Pune the next day.

The magazine describes itself as a print analogue of a democratic tool that is for, by and about the Indian motorcyclist. That is more than a slogan. Because the community came first, the magazine's content could draw on thousands of members across India rather than on a small staff alone, and its subscription descriptions stress that almost no content is syndicated from other sources: it comes from the core editorial team and the xBhp members themselves. Print, for xBhp, was the community writing itself onto paper.

The I, the Biker Philosophy

The October 2010 inaugural issue was created around the theme I, the Biker, putting the motorcyclist ahead of the motorcycle. xBhp's launch statement explains the intent: to elevate motorcycling from a necessity-driven activity to a lifestyle choice, and to present motorcycling in its full, wholesome form, delving into travel on bikes and safe riding practices, and emphasising that motorcycling is as much a cerebral activity as a physical one. In a country where two-wheelers were long bought purely for cheap transport, that was a cultural argument as much as an editorial one.

The magazine lists its own key differentiators: a focus on people, travel on motorcycles, a high quality of photography, a minimum of syndicated content, and the flavour of freedom and youth. For the motorcycling community of India, xBhp presents the magazine as a means of spreading its message of safe, responsible and fun motorcycling, with the ultimate aim of globalising the Indian motorcyclist. Every element of that programme, people first, safety always, India to the world, remains recognisable in the platform's later road trips and special issues.

Published from New Delhi, Run by Motorcyclists

xBhp is published out of New Delhi, India, and is run by hardcore motorcyclists, according to its magazine subscription description. The platform also operates India's largest motorcycling web portal and community, in its own description, and the print magazine version has been available at most newsstands and airports around India. The combination is a hybrid rare in Indian publishing: a forum community, a web portal, a print magazine and an events and road-trip organisation, all under one name and one philosophy.

The magazine's production values are part of its identity. xBhp states that it has very high photography standards, and anyone familiar with its issues knows the large-format riding photography that fills them: mountain roads, superbikes at dawn, riders in full gear against big landscapes. In a market where motorcycle coverage was often a page of specifications, xBhp's photo-led travel storytelling gave Indian bikers a magazine that looked like the life they wanted to live.

What the Magazine Covers

As a motorcycling lifestyle magazine, xBhp features motorcycle reviews, travelogues and riding culture, as this directory's listing summarises. Reviews matter, and the community's forums carry deep technical and ownership discussion, but the magazine's centre of gravity is the journey: long rides across India and abroad, the people met on the road, and the culture of clubs, meets and group rides that the community sustains. The editorial team's own rides supply much of the material, supplemented by members' travelogues from across the country.

Safe riding is a constant theme rather than an occasional campaign. The community's pages carry standing riding-safety reminders, and the magazine's stated mission of safe, responsible and fun motorcycling runs through its events, including track days that move speed off public roads and onto circuits. xBhp's Biker of the Year award, launched in 2013, attempted to recognise and reward bikers who had made a positive contribution to society, extending the i, the Biker idea from personal riding to public responsibility.

Road Trips as Editorial Signature

xBhp's road trips are its best-known productions, and they feed directly into the magazine. The Great Indian Roadtrip of 2006, undertaken years before the print magazine existed, became community legend and the subject of retrospective coverage and a coffee-table book. The Grand Australian Roadtrip of 2013 saw Sunny, the platform's central figure, ride 23,456 kilometres in Australia on a Ducati Multistrada. These journeys demonstrated the magazine's method: ride far, photograph everything, and publish the story as proof that Indian motorcyclists belong on the world's roads.

The pattern continued with the xBhp Dominar Great Asian Odyssey, a 15,000-kilometre journey that started from New Delhi on 13 October 2019, heading south-east to Singapore and concluding in Sri Lanka by the end of January 2020. It was ridden on three Bajaj Dominar 400 motorcycles, with meets with bikers in cities along the route, from Guwahati and Dimapur to Kolkata and beyond, and xBhp sold a special print magazine issue devoted to the Odyssey. A road trip that begins as community theatre ends, in xBhp's model, as a collectible magazine.

Community, Events and Track Days

The community is the magazine's foundation, and xBhp's calendar shows how the two feed each other. In June 2013 the platform marked ten years of its existence with a mega group ride culminating at Worlds of Wonder amusement park in Noida. Through 2013 it ran track days at the Buddh International Circuit, India's Formula One circuit, including an exclusive track day inviting some forty bikers from Delhi and the National Capital Region, and a further track day for the heads of major motorcycling clubs from across the country. It also served as community partner to India Bike Week 2013.

These events are not separate from the magazine; they are its reporting ground and its distribution of identity. Riders who meet at an xBhp ride or track day read about riders like themselves in its pages, and the magazine's forums and portal keep the conversation running between issues. The launch statement's hope that a small step in print would become a giant leap for the two-wheeler fraternity of the nation describes this community machinery as much as the magazine itself.

Digital Presence and How to Read It

xBhp's home is xbhp.com, which hosts the magazine's pages, the community forums and its road-trip reporting. The magazine has also been distributed digitally through magazine apps, including a Magzter-based xBhp Magazine application, with subscription descriptions repeating its New Delhi origin, its i, the Biker philosophy and its claim to India's largest motorcycling web portal and community. The print magazine has been sold at newsstands and airports around India and through the platform's own channels, including special issues sold directly to the community, such as the Odyssey special.

For readers coming to xBhp today, the practical order is the reverse of its history: most will meet the community and portal first, then the magazine. That is fitting for a title that began online in the early 2000s and added print in 2010 as an expression of community strength. The website remains the living centre, carrying the forums, the safety culture and the road-trip archive, while the magazine preserves the community's best journeys and photographs in a form meant to be kept.

Its Place in Indian Motorcycling Media

India has many automobile magazines, but xBhp occupies a category of its own: a motorcycling-only lifestyle title created by a rider community. Where conventional auto media begin with the machine, xBhp begins with the rider, and where they end with a verdict, xBhp ends with a journey. Its own description calls it one of the finest motorcycle touring and lifestyle magazines, and its record of national and international road trips on superbikes, undertaken with premium brand partners, supports the touring half of that claim with mileage few rivals can match.

For worldnm.com readers, the essential facts are these: xBhp is an English motorcycling lifestyle magazine published from New Delhi, launched in print as a bi-monthly on 27 September 2010 with an October 2010 inaugural issue, growing out of an online community dating to 2002, edited around the i, the Biker philosophy, and filled with reviews, travelogues and riding culture produced by its editorial team and thousands of community members across India. It is less a magazine about motorcycles than a magazine about the Indians who ride them.