Two former business rivals and now close friends, John Walton and Robert Wilkinson, are on a round-the-world adventure in their 1927 and 1926 Bentleys. CT caught up with them to talk life on the road, their beloved vintage cars and discovering India from behind the wheel. During the India leg, the duo got a taste of Kolkata on Sunday, when the Classic Drivers Club hosted a drive through Dalhousie, Red Road and past the Victoria Memorial, winding down over brunch at a five-star property.
Beyond the tourist trail: Food and finding India
He returns to Kolkata on October 10 for the festival season, before continuing towards Delhi. Wilkinson prefers the stretches between the must-sees: “Generally, you can have more fun when you’re on the beaten track than you can when you just go from one city to another.
What began as a year break turned into a 14-year adventure for Wilkinson. Now 64, he bought his green 1926 Bentley in his late 40s, intending to take the kind of gap year his three children had after university. For 12 months,” he says.
Because i’ve never had a gap year, that I would buy an old Bentley and go driving, “I decided,.
They’re very welcoming,” he says. “I find it fascinating to see all this being created mechanically,” he says. “We never miss a chai tapri,” says Walton — a steaming glass, a roadside pause, the Bentley waiting nearby.
Wilkinson’s India journey has been less about landmarks and more about experiencing India — the warmth of people, food changing region to region, and, surprisingly, road quality. “I really enjoy the people. I think they’re so nice. There’s no hostility. Manufacturing visits have been a highlight — an agricultural tractor maker, a rubber plantation, a tea plantation, a latex factory producing surgical gloves — and after a Jeep factory, he’s hoping for a JCB plant or a steelworks next. Chai stops are the simpler pleasure. Fourteen years on, the Bentley has crossed continents – North & South America, Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, India, Russia and Africa – with Wilkinson driving for weeks at a stretch, parking up, flying home to work, then setting off again. India entered the picture after a chance meeting with a Mumbai-based travel agent in Norway. The car arrived about a year ago, and Wilkinson has made repeated trips since, next headed towards Delhi.