The last trip of Giorgio Bettinelli

Not everyone can understand Italian, let alone understand what it says Giorgio Bettinelli in this great video of the Feltrinelli Editore. First of all, who was Giorgio Bettinelli?

(Crema, 15 May 1955 - Jinghong, China, September 16, 2008) was a journalist, writer, songwriter and Italian travelers.

Arts degree at the University of Rome, is famous for its four long trips made aboard a Vespa. In fact, during his stay in Indonesia, as payment of a series of debts, he is presented with a Vespa fell in love immediately.

His first trip departs from Mentana, where he was resident in the province of Rome, in 1992 assigned Saigon, where he arrives nine months later - March 1993 - covering 24,000 kilometers. The second part to arrive from Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego and lasts from 1994 to 1995 on a journey of 36,000 kilometers. The third connects Melbourne to Cape Town, for a total of 52,000 km run between 1995 and 1996. The fourth and last, called Odyssey Worldwide, is a veritable world tour, lasting more than three years, from October 1997 to May 2001: the place of departure is the Tierra del Fuego and destination and Tasmania . It covers 144,000 kilometers through Alaska, Siberia, entering Africa through the Strait of Gibraltar, and by walking across to Djibouti through again to Cape Town, then drive along the entire south Asia from Yemen to Indonesia , until the last continent, Australia, and the final destination, Tasmania. During this trip Giorgio Bettinelli was also kidnapped by a guerrilla group in Congo, but was released shortly afterwards robbed of everything but his life saved. The now-experienced pilot travelers decided not to stop, and then had another great trip in the only country he has not path with China (where he moved and married), which was followed by the exit his latest book La Cina in Vespa.

Giorgio Bettinelli died in Jinghong, China, September 16, 2008, at the age of 53 years for a sudden illness. There he lived for four years, on the banks of the Mekong, with his wife Yapei. Was preparing another book, this time on Tibet.

Giorgio Bettinelli in this video says:

Unlike the other four trips made before the wasp, this fifth trip has a specialty all its own, since the four previous trips have led me in the course of fifteen years to cover, 260.000km in 134 countries around the world twice five continents.

This fifth trip, but covers only one country was a trip of a year and a half in which I have a zig zag path, but also identifying the route less zig zag, zig schizophrenic zagante eventually was because, The objective of this trip was ok through an exhaustive one country, touching all the capitals, of the 33 geographic areas, 34 for China include Taiwan, 33 geographic areas make up this huge mosaic of China, which is now, it has become fashionable to call big question of China's economic boom, and which I for one, like many other Europeans and Italians, little is known, if one says Missouri, Minnesota, Texas, Arcansal, good or bad, everyone knows where they go to parry if you say Ouba, Eibay, Henan, Ounan, Sinjan, Jeinjan, which are states and provinces, as big as American ones, if not much more, little is known yet. I already lived in China for two years and a half, when I managed to get a Chinese driving license, a driving Chinese, was not recognized internationally, simultaneously with the gesture that I stuck it in the pocket, there's been this idea why not try to make a trip, then over time they told me that was never done, nor ever by a Chinese first, because there was not just the historical conditions and economic to do so, let not by a foreigner.

More often I was asked when you finish a trip, what do you feel?

Before I have always traveled, I traveled in a manner that is also almost pathological, because at fourteen I went hitchhiking from Crema, where I was born in Copenhagen, not only with the permission, but with the money my father, fifteen years North Africa was then, at seventeen was the baptism of the road, baptism, confirmation and active militancy all at once, which made me take a magic bus, those who left full of scocciatoni of freak, which left London from Trieste there was an empty seat for me, and that was really the first trip, "72 to seventeen years, India was quite different from what is now, and besides, I too was. And then there were these other trip, then these four, now five trips wasp.

The common denominator, especially the latter, once arrived at destination, and crossed the line Mental arrival of a syndrome, "Yeh-Yeh I've done," and sometimes when we talk about African wasp crossed with a journey from Tangier to Cape Town, Cape Town in Djibouti, 30 African realities, of which fifteen were at war, and in brutal war, not the tank, which is a machete, in areas such as: Sierra Leone , Liberia, there are no past, but I skirted the border, Angola, in 1999, was perhaps the most hellish country, the worst country where a child could be born.

Ever happened to me this, for each arrival, beyond this explosion of joy that in truth there never was, the strongest feeling was that of the, melancholy, because the journey was over, especially after the first Travel from Rome to Saigon, I did not know if I could do another one, but meanwhile there have been many, but this sadness larvatamente aromatic arrival, there's always been.

If one leaves for a short trip, a week, a month, may be left at home all the rest and only focus on the journey before him, who is running for sixteen years in wasp, must also be focused on his life, on What is happening inside him at that time, and not just on a much more documentation that goes on around him.

And China is a country with incredible, the stimuli for the points of reflection, for history, which was often tragic, but to me these things were happening in the meantime, and then start thinking to censor this part staff, only to tell what they saw his eyes, then I said, no sincerity is not up to who is writing his life on the go, and I really put the soul in the square, telling what has now happened to me , which takes away in terms of numbers, perhaps a half of the book, in a Chinese context, because now there are four and a half years that I live there, with little indulgence towards me, sometimes with little mercy, registering with the heart hand what was happening inside, and around, with the sincerity of a person sincere or a fool, depending on your point of view.

And I hope that the book has come out, you like.



YOU SEE THE BOOK OF GIORGIO BETTINELLI "LA CINA IN VESPA"