Unknown destination
Travelling around the world without a fixed destination. By tandem!

The art of travelling never ends, journeys continue with memories and stories told.

When the traveller sat down on the sand of the beach and said : “there is nothing left to see”, he knew that not to be the truth. We want to go further because there is always something beyond, and something new even in places you think you have already seen. If you have been in summer then go in spring, if you have been during the day then go at night, with sun where it was raining, look for the green harvest, the ripe fruit, the stone that moved, the shadow you had not seen.. One shall walk over their known paths, and set out on them again to mark out new ones. One shall set out on these journeys again and again.



TWO EYES TO SEE, FOUR LEGS TO GO.

Around 15,000 kilometres riding a tandem: from Schio to "the end of the world", across the Balkans, Turkey, Iran, ex Soviet Union countries, China, Pakistan and India, where the journey may find a new start. Two of us on a tandem, fully equipped with backpacks, tents, high definition videocamera, and computer. Without limits of time nor fixed destination.

To gather memories, encounters, emotions, and sensations. To live and to communicate these through a real time blog where you will see images and read stories about the people we'll meet, get to know, and whose stories we will tell. Riding, climbing mountains and walking. Crossing borders, out there and in ourselves. Going beyond our limits, beyond the Pillars of Hercules represented by our daily way of seeing things.

Day by day, metre after metre.

Beyond the common sense and modern conveniences of a normal life. Simply beyond. It is not supposed to be an extreme journey, but surely it will be intense. We are not crazy, unrealistic or unconscious people. We have been spending months getting ready for this adventure, we are training our bodies and minds: we know the journey will take all our energy, and for a long time. We are conscious we will have to face extreme situations and be resilient, like a tree or a stone. For sure, we are not the most common people though: Simone is a musician with a visual handicap, Dino an experienced and passionate traveller. We are going to leave, nothing could stop us.

We cross our fingers.



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THE TRAVEL

We are going to travel towards India, a place we don't know yet. By tandem, only the two of us, to defy Simone's visual handicap.

On this web site we will tell of our experiences in real time. A videocamera and a laptop will be our inseparable travel companions, allowing everyone to live this unique experience: 15,000 kilometres covered with only the force of our legs and our hearts. We are going to demonstate it is possible to go very far away without leaving a trace to the environment.

We will gather information in each visited country. With 10 minute videos and photos we will offer our impressions, meetings, and emotions. Simone's voice allow visually handicapped people to listen to out travel stories.

We will document the people we meet, life conditions and culture, the beauty of nature and the environment, paying attention without prejudice or stereotype. We will communicate our difficulties, amazement, irony, passion and joy, all essential ingredients in travel, including fun and behind the scenes problems.

It is our desire and initiative to raise public awareness against racism and fear of others. Different religions, traditional dress, laws, social conventions and traditions cannot threaten the natural human trait to live in peace. Fear of the unknown can lead us to see something different and dangerous in people instead of a gift to be understood and nurtured. We know we are going to face situations of extreme poverty. We'll try to underline poverty as the result of the insane functioning of the western economic and social system. We believe that poverty is not an inevitable destiny, and we will propose our deliberations of the situations we find. Qualche parola per definire cos'è la Convenzione Onu dei diritti delle persone disabili  della quale questo progetto è ambasciatore in veste simbolica. Il messaggio riassuntivo è: Tutti i membri della società hanno gli stessi diritti umani che includono diritti civili, culturali, economici, politici e sociali. Tutte le persone con disabilità hanno il diritto di essere libere da discriminazione nel godere dei loro diritti. La convenzione sottolinea come la disabilità non sia nella persona stessa ma il risultato dell'interazione tra il soggetto e l'ambiente in cui vive. Alla attuale convenzione si è arrivati il 13 dicembre 2006 attraverso un lungo percorso di interessamento al tema della disabilita partito nel 1948 con la carta ONU dei diritti dell'uomo.