In one of the many preparations for his part in his latest Hollywood movie, Kandahar, Ali Fazal had to learn Dirt biking. Still a rare sport in India, Ali who plays the role of Kahil in the film, spent time during the shoot learning the new skill set required for his character. The film which is a war thriller, has Ali star in his first ever high octane packed action film. The actor shot the film extensively in the Al Ula region of Saudi Arabia.

Ali says, “So basically dirt biking has clearly become a very loved passion in my life. Also surprisingly dissipating me from regular biking on the busy roads of our cities. But you know you’ll never be as good as you wanna be because when you’re working with such an amazing stunt team on a film like Kandahar, where everything is totally measured and state-of-the-art, even though the bike was a very simple bike, deliberately chose a very non pricey bike like a KTM. I mean, we chose a KTM as opposed to one of those cool Ducati or sports bikes, the Hayabusa that people love watching. But this was because we actually had to do these stunts. I had to do these stunts in the desert. And we couldn’t fake a lot of this stuff. So I learned about dirt biking. I landed up 25 days before shoot and started learning these tricks. Of course, first learning how to just ride plainly on the sand and then, doing different kinds of skids and the breaks, different kinds of turns. And ultimately, no matter what stunts you pull off, you have to make the character come alive. There’s body language and everything. So me and my stunt double, we had to work together all the time because there were some shots like riding on top of a very steep Cliff which has only rocks, those things I never did.”

Kandahar stars top international actors like Gerard Butler, Travis Fimmel and Navid Negahban and released this past weekend in North America, with India release to follow soon. Ali plays the role of Kahil, who is one of the main antagonists of the movie.