A motorcycle trip becomes a father's dream delayed

Her father’s unfinished dream

Muzamil opens the conversation by noting how change-makers often emerge unconsciously, simply doing what makes sense to them. Zenith Irfan carries a dream that is not her own. Her father wanted to travel the world on a motorcycle, play guitar, live as a gypsy. He died of a heart attack at 34, when Zenith was 10 months old.

Her mother was widowed at 28 and never remarried. She raised two children alone in Pakistan after immigrating from Sharjah, where Zenith had spent her childhood. The family struggled. They slept in one room without pillows. But her mother refused to infantilize them.

“My mom never brought me up like this: oh, you guys are children,” Zenith says. “She always brought us all in a way that we are my best friends.” That resilience would shape Zenith’s entire life.

From necessity to transcendence

At 15, Zenith needed to get to university. Public transport in Karachi was expensive. Her uncle suggested she use her brother Sultan’s motorcycle. In 2013, Sultan taught her to ride a 70cc bike. It was practical at first. But then heartbreak and loss arrived. A first relationship ended. A friend died in college. The pain demanded an outlet.

“I was so angry because of my heart being broken that I just rented it out on the bike,” she tells Muzamil. She channeled the anger into motion. In August 2015, she departed for Khunjrab Pass on a borrowed 125cc bike, completing 3,200 kilometers alone. She had never traveled north before. She had no plan.

When she began posting about her travels on social media, she was simply writing in her diary. She had no idea what an influencer was. YouTube was banned in Pakistan. Yet the response was immediate. She became known as Pakistan’s motorcycle girl, though she never asked for it.

“I never did it for the fame. I never did it like a title. This just came along. It was something that was very close to you when you decided to do it.”

Silence in the face of backlash

The backlash was swift and vicious. Men in the biking community questioned if she had ridden alone. She was called a liar, a bad girl, promiscuous, morally corrupt. None of it mattered to what she had actually done.

What stunned Muzamil was her silence. “I never heard anything from you on that front and you just kept on doing what you were doing,” he notes. Zenith simply replies, “I am very silent.”

Her quiet persistence mattered more than any defense ever could.

How change really happens

Traveling on a motorcycle offers something cars cannot. “All of North, and I got a 360 degree view of North. I could smell it, I could feel it. Like, it was your full 3D experience,” Zenith describes.

She learned that societal change does not come from confrontation. It comes from repetition. A woman on a scooter in a conservative area is shocking the first time. Normal by the third. That is how change happens. Normalization itself is the revolution.

She recalls a girl in a village wearing a red biker jacket, drinking tea in front of Zenith. “In her mind that’s magic. She’ll remember it for the rest of her life. She now knows that a woman can do it.” No sermon. No activism. Just a vision.

Building forward

By 21, brands began to court her. Nishat Linen, Suzuki, and others sponsored her travels. A filmmaker saw a clip of her in the New York Times and made a biopic. At 22, she became a film subject. The 2018 premiere moved her to tears.

Now she hosts Discovery Ride on Discover Pakistan channel. But her ambition extends beyond travel. She wants to build what she calls an empire. “I really want to have my own orphanage. It shouldn’t be like an orphanage, but like a school where they are learning skills. If someone wants to do content creating or YouTube, we give them the skills to do.”

She imagines a travel brand: watches, makeup kits, boutiques for travelers. Each product drawn from lived expertise.

When Muzamil closes the conversation, he notes the hour has passed without either noticing. Zenith’s final thought captures her entire approach. “If someone’s life changes towards leading towards that path where they’re passionate about something, just by witnessing my journey, then I think I did something in my life. I can die peacefully.”