It is 6.15 am on a cloudy Sunday, and the west end of Kartavya Path is only just waking up.
Runners in full gear jog past in twos and threes. Cyclists in full kit — helmets, glasses, gloves — glide past an elderly couple on their early morning walk. A small group of children skate off toward the east end, wheels rattling faintly against the road, the clatter rising and fading as they cut around a paver joint.
Clustered near the yellow police barricades are 30-odd people in knee pads and windbreakers, some with speakers in their hand playing a mix of English pop and Hindi film songs.
These are the members of the Delhi Skating Community (DSC).
They stretch before the day’s run, the occasional test-push of a board sending a short, hollow rumble across the empty road.
By 6.30, the group is moving. Roller skaters go first, arching up the long incline toward Rashtrapati Bhavan, the smooth hiss of their wheels breaking into short scrapes each time someone leans into a turn.
Skateboarders roll in behind them, pushing hard against the gradient.
In 2022, he formed DSC after realising that many people were interested in skating but did not have a community to learn with or join.
Nischal says he vets every member personally. “There is a Google form that one has to fill in order to register to attend our sessions… I screen them for their intent the way universities screen application essays. I ask them what they will bring to the community.”
Safety is non-negotiable, he says. “I want this to be a safe space for every woman and child who wants to come here.”
The community is also involved in projects like Rolling Hearts, where Nischal and a group of volunteers teach skating to children at shelters.
Among the day’s skaters are Ramsha and her brother Daniel as their father, Mohd. Furquan Saifi, (60), looks on.
Saifi, who is from Meerut, has been skating since he was a young boy. “I discovered the sport during a vacation to Nainital, when I saw someone skate. I liked it, and felt I should learn too. After that, I started skating at the junior level,” he says.
Nearby, 5-year-old Kaira Verma wobbles along the flat stretch before lifting herself up and coming to a stop. Her mother, Deepika, watches from the sidelines, making sure she is alright.
Having discovered the sport at school barely two months ago, she is one of the community’s newest and smallest recruits.
Sneha Singh, a 20-year-old journalism student, has travelled 60 km from Sonipat by metro and auto-rickshaw just to skate. “I travel for 1.5 hours to only skate for about an hour here. But it’s worth it… I like skating because It feels like I’m flying, I am free,” she says on what keeps her coming back.
DSC is not the only skating community in Delhi.
15 km away in Sainik Farms, Saket, is Backyard Skatepark — an open-roofed private facility of ramps, rails and banks built on family land.
Its founder, 20-year-old Siddhant Dhankar, started skateboarding in 2019. In November 2021, he opened the park with his father, who has also taken part in several national-level competitions.
“We saw that there was a lack of proper skating facilities in Delhi and all over India, and decided to build this place from the scratch,” Siddhant says, adding that brand shoots, sponsorships and events bring the community commercial visibility it never gets.
Coaching the children is Akash Kumar, 28, who left a government job for skateboarding in 2018 after discovering it as “a hobby” that became “an adrenaline rush”.
Certified by the Roller Skating Federation of India, he now coaches students aged three and a half to sixty-five.
One of his students, 8-year-old Seher, comes running to him. She tugs at his sleeves and asks, “Can I go drink water?” to which he nods.
Right after that, she comes running back asking, “What should I do next?”
Siddhant’s younger brother, 15-year-old Naitik Dhankar, is also a national medallist — he competed in China earlier in April for the Asian Skateboarding Championship 2026. He won a bronze medal in 58th National Roller Skating Championship 2020-21.
“I got to learn a lot of tricks that I used to only see on my phone… seeing them in real life,” Naitik says of competing abroad. “But we still have miles to go.”
His academy has trained roughly a thousand skaters and produced four skateboarders who represented India at this year’s Asian championship in China.
Yet in Delhi, there is not one public skate park, while Chandigarh, Pune, Mumbai and Bengaluru all have one.
Noting how the government’s sports schemes still don’t recognise skateboarding, despite its Olympic status since Tokyo 2020, he says, “The skating scene in Delhi is a little disorganised. Because we don’t have public places to skate, people skate in parks, on the metro station, on roads… a lot of people do it just for fun, but then they get chased away either by the police, people, or even street dogs.”
“There is a need for proper public infrastructure for a community that is only growing,” he adds.
Back at Kartavya Path, the cloud cover starts to thin. Khwahish sets her board down on the pavement one more time and shows off the trick she’s just learned that same morning — an Ollie, where the rider jumps into the air with the board by snapping its tail down. A stranger had taught it to her after noticing she had brought her board.
The tail cracks against the pavement, the board lifts. She lands with a thud as the city slowly wakes up.
—- captions: -Skaters at Kartavya Path in Delhi on a Sunday morning. (Express Photo by Abhinav Saha)
