SIMONE My name is Simone Salvagnin, I am 25, I was born and live in Schio and I am a musician who plays drums, and in my spare time I love studying and doing massage. I practice several sports: climbing, swimming, running in the mountains, and riding my mountain bike. I practice all these activities regularly in spite of Retinitis Pigmentosa, a hereditary disease of the eye that leads to deterioration of vision and which has brought me almost total blindness. This is why I need continual physical activity, to feel alive and full of positive energy.

When I am under stress my thoughts appear clearer and I am able to concentrate much better. It is a kind of active meditation which helps me to gain consciousness and forget my limits. Physical exertion forces me to focus all my energies and resources on what I am doing, with so much effort that I am not aware anymore that I cannot see, my other senses are alert and hold me up.

Thanks to a childhood spent in contact with nature, in the woods and open-air, I developed a great passion for mountain and Alpine sports: from ski-ing to hillwalking. In my family it was an everyday habit to talk about travels and climbing. Before I was born my father and uncle had travelled very much, all around the world, and my uncle is still an expert climber quite well known in our region.

Retinitis Pigmentosa was diagnosed to me when I was 10. My father tried in every way to be on my side to let me continue to practice sport and go hillwalking.

But few years later, my father's death and the economic difficulties of my family turned my desire to travel into a utopia.

After this it was the music which saved me from depression. I tried many instruments, untill drums fascinated me the most, because they demanded my physical presence and energy.

Drums have become my job, and this has allowed to me to face the worsening of the illness, and the growing difficulties to move and make things.

In the last few months, a new incentive was born in me to put me to the test, to challenge my limits and face more and more extreme sports activities. It was a growing self-confidence that gave me back the desire and curiosity to travel, together with the encounters of Dino who fascinated me with the stories of his adventures around the world.

At the eve of our adventure to India (and then, who knows..) I feel this to be the beginning of a long series of both small and epic adventures.