I was born. There was no stork—just screams, sticky fluids, and sharp, dangerous instruments. Then I grew up and had a happy childhood—happier and luckier than many others. My parents had a motorhome, and we used it to travel through more than 30 countries. Hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Every year, for several months, for 18 years. And all sorts of things happened. I spent the summers of 2003, 2004, and 2005 working as a waiter in a restaurant in Dorset, England. I was young, but it was much more fun than any classroom method for learning English.
In 2010, I took my first steps (toward who knows exactly what). I grabbed a backpack and set off on a walk from Logroño to Santiago de Compostela. It was about 800 km. The Camino de Santiago felt too easy, too well-trodden, and I wanted to do something that had never been done before. So in 2011 I left from Turin, reached Iceland, and cycled all the way around it. I was completely unprepared, reckless, out of shape, and disorganized—but it was an incredible experience.
After returning from Iceland, I never stopped. In 2012, I headed to the Sahara. I cycled 4,000 km from Turin to the Sahara Desert. During those bike trips, I started experimenting with video, creating documentaries from scratch with no prior experience. They did really well online.
In 2013, a small Sky channel, Bike Channel, aired my documentaries about my cycling journeys in Iceland and the Sahara for a year. Hey Mom, I’m a filmmaker!!! Meanwhile, I was studying at university and spending an Erasmus year in Las Palmas (yes, there was plenty of studying).
My social media channels started to grow, and I began working full-time creating web series, content, and travel stories. Then came Trivago, Lonely Planet, Radio Capital, Volagratis, and Lastminute, and I started traveling the world to tell its stories. A lot of work, a lot of creativity, and a lot of freedom.
In 2015, I met Ludovico de Maistre from the Taurinorum Team. We crossed Ethiopia in an Ape, and I was the creative director and storyteller of the documentary series that was about to be born. I returned from Ethiopia the day before graduating in Intercultural Communication. 100/100.
In 2016, I viaggi al Rallentatore was born—a way of telling travel stories without filters, in a fun and authentic way, just like I am. Rai3 welcomed us into the new Kilimangiaro team as if we were family. We were still young, but we gave it everything we had, and our enthusiasm, passion, and determination were rewarded with the trust of the show’s writers. We had nothing in hand, but I managed to put together videos from my adventures over the previous years, and we ended up on air with 13 episodes of 12 minutes each. Ethiopia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Nepal.
That same year, the project “Carichi per il Vietnam” was born to test the power of social media. And it was pure power. Together with Daniel Mazza, I imagined and created a crowdfunding campaign that was an outstanding success. In 20 days, we raised €9,000, which we used to buy more than a ton of school supplies for orphans in Vietnam. We spent a month distributing all the gifts to more than 400 children scattered across 4,000 km of Southeast Asia... by scooter.
In the 2017–2018 season, the Kilimangiaro editorial team placed even more trust in us, and we remained part of the team. The adventure with Ludo continued, and this time we really went for it. Morocco, Tibet by bike, Namibia in a 4x4, Senegal in a Car Rapide, Myanmar by hitchhiking—for a total of 17 episodes of 12 minutes each. I was still the director and host of the series.
In 2017, another great adventure began: I opened my trips to the public. It’s a huge responsibility, and the rewards have been immense. So many people, so many friends, endless emotions. In one year: Iceland in winter, Iceland by campervan, Tibet by bike, China—and the journey had only just begun. But on my own, I couldn’t do it all. There were so many requests, and with me being on the road 300 days a year, very little energy left. And that’s when Erica stepped in!
Erica is basically me, just female—which means impulsive too. The following year, she handed in her resignation and moved to the Canary Islands. And that’s how the core of Sto Gran Tour was born, the best tour operator for adventure travel. I’m proud to have her as my right-hand person. I have no idea what the future holds. In just one year, everything changed, and even imagining it is beyond me.
The important thing is to keep dreaming, because beautiful things do come.
