From Edinburgh to Malaga, Paris to Moscow … Constantin Wild has probably already been there on his motorbike. Sometimes he even tracks down gemstones on his discovery tours, as he did a few years ago in Russia …

“On a motorbike, you get to know the world in a much more direct, unfiltered way than you would by car, for example,” says Constantin Wild. “You’re right up close all the time: close to the road, close to Nature, close to the people.” It’s that ‘playing with physical forces’ that has appealed to him about motorcycling for a long time: “Playing with centrifugal forces, gravitational pull, speed. And obviously there’s a bit of recklessness in there somewhere too,” admits Wild with a smile. …

He refers to himself as a ‘globetrotter’. He has explored the whole of Europe by motorcycle, and sometimes sets off on quite spontaneous expeditions, as he did just recently in Austria.

And in February, during the Gem and Jewelry Exchange (GJX) in Tucson, at which his gemstone company exhibits every year, he went on some extensive evening motorcycle tours through Arizona. “There’s no reason why business and pleasure shouldn’t overlap from time to time”, says Wild. Talking of which, he was one of the first Western Europeans to go to Moscow and St Petersburg by motorcycle in 1988. “On that tour I discovered some Russian demantoids, which are particularly valuable on account of their ‘horsetail’ inclusions. I could talk about the experiences I had on those trips for hours on end. But that,” says Constantin Wild, “is another story”.

Text by: Saraj Morath, Photos by: Martin Glauner