Calcutta: The man with ruffled grey hair perched on a Triumph Bonneville T 100 seems as far from Bollywood as can be till the twinkle in his green eyes give away his Kapoor lineage.
Aditya Raj Kapoor, son of Shammi Kapoor, arrived in Calcutta on Tuesday, having travelled through over a dozen countries over 302 days as part of his world tour on a bike.
Kapoor, who dabbled in films before launching his own business, started going on long rides at 50 and became a "full-time" biker after he turned 60 last year.
"I feel free when I am on a bike. There is something magical about the wind rushing through the helmet with the scenery whizzing past," Kapoor said.
The six-footer's "quest" has clocked more than 32,000km so far, with 3,000km more to go before he reaches Mumbai, from where he had started off in June 2017.
He flew with his bike to Moscow, from where he rode to Vladivostok. "It was freezing in Russia. I had to wear several layers of clothes, including fleece jackets and thermals, under my riding jacket and I could still feel the chill. I barely managed to cover 150km on some days," said Kapoor, who had to learn the Russian alphabet to make sense of the road signs.
A lady who runs a cafe in Russia could not believe Kapoor was on a bike trip. She followed him out of the cafe. One look at the bike and the woman asked Kapoor to wait, rushed back and returned with a bar of chocolate.
While crossing Lake Constance in Germany, a Swiss-German biker called the ticket collector and paid Kapoor's ferry fare of 50 Euros after hearing that he had come all the way from India on a bike.
What spurred Kapoor's trip is the opportunity to meet new people besides the sheer variety of landscape. "Everywhere I went people greeted or waved once they saw my motorcycle. That is the magic of touring on two wheels," he said.
One of the most poignant moments of the ride came when Kapoor visited the Auschwitz concentration camp. "The sign at the main gate was unnerving. It read, Arbeit macht Frei that translates to Work is liberating. At the end of the tour I entered the crematorium, which was a large room with five huge chimneys. I shrieked and ran out," he said.
The 61-year-old who can still get off the saddle with agility rode through Sweden, Poland, Germany and France en route to London before getting on a flight to the US. A flight to Bali got him to the return leg of his journey where he rode through Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar before entering India through Guwahati.
The beating his Triumph received on the "dirt tracks" of Kohima and Imphal is one of the reasons for his Calcutta stop. Kapoor will be in the city for the next three days as his bike gets serviced. Till then, he would like to explore and savour the city.
An ardent fan of Steve Mcqueen who rode a modified Triumph TR6 Trophy in The Great Escape and Marlon Brando who rode his own Triumph Thunderbird 6T in The Wild One, Kapoor's wanted to ride something his screen idols rode.
"I also own a Royal Enfield Classic 500cc motorcycle and have ridden to Lahaul and Spiti from Mumbai with my wife as pillion but I always had a soft corner for Triumph and it hasn't let me down as I had no breakdowns save for a puncture in Russia," Kapoor said.
His next halt: a documentary of his travels, which he has recorded on GoPro action cameras mounted on his helmet.
