SUB DIVING
22 May 2022 Leave a comment
in NATURE Tags: Dive, Diving, Galapagos, Scuba, Scuba diving, Sub diving, Travel
OUTDOOR
03 May 2022 Leave a comment
in NATURE Tags: 4x4, camp, camping, caravan, caravan camping, caravan club, Outdoor, Travel, truck, truck rail
NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON
16 Mar 2022 Leave a comment
in FAVOURITE MOVIES Tags: choice, jeremy irons, LIFE, Lisbon, TRAIN, Travel

IN THE BLUE DEEP BLUE
15 Feb 2022 3 Comments
in KNOWLEDGE Tags: Aviator, Deep blue, Depths, Detachment, existence, Pitfalls, Travel

RUNAWAY
10 Dec 2021 Leave a comment
in FEELINGS Tags: climate, cooking, escape, footwear, friends, friendship, Husband, jobs, process, psychoanalyst, residences, routes, sexual, Travel, wallpaper, window

IN THE MORNING
01 Oct 2021 Leave a comment
in MY LIFE AS A WOMAN Tags: MORNING, Travel, tube, tube station

I had had to get up early that morning, a little earlier than when I went to school. I had taken the subway direction Jonio and I had gotten off more or less at the level of the tram station. I had stopped on the sidewalk so that it divided the street in two halves and while I waited for the tram to arrive I had started to think, to elaborate and to compose, in my mind, the poem that could best describe that moment. It was seven o'clock and the sun had not yet fully risen; its rays touched the skin of my face and arms, brushed me like a caress, like petals of pink, yellow, and orange flowers; the morning breeze made itself felt, gave a lonely breeze, fresh and soft at the same time. I was, therefore, in the middle of the road, but perhaps it is more correct to say that I was at the center of an antithesis operated by time. The feet were a little cold, while the hands, kept in the pockets of the jacket, were too warm and I felt that if, at any moment I took them out, I might find that they were melted like candles in the fire. After a few moments, perhaps a few minutes, perhaps half an hour, it seemed to me that I could hear the sound of the mechanisms that are located above the trams that run on the great wires that are placed for the operation of the trolleybuses; and at the same time the perpetual and fast and repetitive sound of the contact between the rails and the noises of the tram. I looked around, it seemed that I was the only one listening to it, maybe the others just heard it, they just didn't care, everyone cared for himself alone: who was on the phone, who listened to music and who chatted animatedly with the person that stood beside him. Nobody seemed to notice the wonder that was happening.
he sound was getting louder, until I could see the tram: it was making the curve. Then, for a moment, a gust of wind produced by the cutting of the air of the vehicle, and then a light whistle. He had stopped: the doors had opened in front of me and practically immediately I moved and placed, first one, then the other, my feet on the plastic that covered the floor of the wagon, a little loose and a little sticky. Then I looked for a free seat on the tram, and as soon as I found one on the back I sat down. I put my arm on the window and with my hand I moved the hair that the wind had blown up in front of my eyes. Here it is, the wonder. From the window I could make out the buildings opposite, of that color between cold beige and yellow, but which were warmed by the warm rays of the sun, which gave those ancient buildings an orange hue. They were like satellites that glow with reflected light. From where I was observing that scene, I could also see below the tracks on which he was traveling, the electric wires above; around pines and other magnificent buildings of the same color as those described above. It looked like one of those perfect landscapes for an analog. There I found peace.
NOMADLAND
17 Sep 2021 Leave a comment
in TRAVELLING Tags: camper, iurta, Mongolia, nomad, Nomadland, nomads, reg, Travel, travellers, TRAVELLING, van

The term nomad is really overused today, and we often forget that there are people who live this lifestyle out of necessity or culture, as the only reality they have and not as a choice. Once very many, today there are few people who still live in this way: the nomads of Mongolia are one of them. In the arid Mongolian steppes there is no room for cultivation, the main means of livelihood is livestock, and to always guarantee new pastures for the cattle, families move with their gers and their trucks, which represent all their possessions. Living this life is not easy, there is no hot water (not even cold water to take a decent shower), no toilet, no power outlet other than solar panels for the cell phone, no fridge and no entertainment. We tried to live like this for a week and it was pretty tough. Between the food always based on the strangest meats, the lack of hygiene and the most absurd behavioral rules, nomads live a truly crazy life.

You cook on the floor, eat on the floor, sleep on the floor ... but if there is food placed on the ground and you try to climb over it, walking over it with your feet, you will hear it screaming! Nomads really eat everything: from sausages made of guts emptied of excrement, to the head of a kid with delicious eyeballs, but the most absurd thing we saw presented for dinner was a… marmot !!! Not just its meat: a marmot emptied of its entrails and used as a "pressure cooker" to cook its own meat!

Thank goodness there will be something good to drink, right? Obviously not, because what they usually drink is salty tea. Yes, salty. They are people used to riding for hours and hours, they will have a very comfortable and soft saddle ... but no, their saddles are made of wood and, in order not to miss any inconvenience, their stirrups are very short, so that you always have to ride raised from the saddle. An infinite pain. The ger is a concentrate of ancient engineering, a real portable miniature house. Once disassembled, it is transported entirely with all the furniture in a pick-up. Do you know how long it takes to assemble one? Two hours, counted.
A nomad wakes up every morning at 6, milks the cows and then accompanies the herd of sheep on horseback to pasture… then he stands there watching them for 4 to 7 hours, with a nap attached. The horses are not tied up, nor in the pens. They are left free but with the 3 legs tied by a rope, so that they can graze and move but… do not stray too far.

What we would call spoiled milk for them is a delicacy in which to dip cookies or add to soup. Nomads eat a lot, it will be to stock up for the harsh winter. And they expect you to eat the same. The problem is that grandma's delicacies aren't exactly what they offer you. And they are almost aggressive in insisting that you do an encore, forbidden to say no.

"I am proud to be born in the taiga," says Tumursukh sitting at a table in a cafe in Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, a stone's throw from the offices of the Ministry of the Environment, for which he works. “My father took me there since I was a child, and he taught me to know and love her. When I left to study in the capital, I began to miss him. I waited several years before my dream came true: to be appointed by the Ministry of the Environment responsible for the protection of the Hovsgol region. So in 1987 I was able to create the first protected area and safeguard a part of the region from mining. In the 1980s, the first industries began to settle down, digging the mountain to get phosphorus. We fight to preserve our nature from this type of threat because the taiga, which is home to rare flowers, elk, bear and ibex, is precious and fragile. The government understood this and decided to keep it ”.

Ulaanbaatar (Ulan Bator), the capital of Mongolia with just over a million inhabitants, has become the most polluted capital in the world, surpassing Beijing and New Delhi, which both have 20 times the number of inhabitants. In December, when temperatures drop to as low as -40 degrees, air pollution levels are five times worse than in historically polluted Beijing, largely due to the number of coal stoves that poorer residents rely on.

Agence France-Presse reports that Mongols are turning to drinks like "oxygen infusions" and "lung tea" to try to strengthen their bronchial ducts and protect themselves from the polluted air they breathe every day. Advertisements for these probably ineffective drinks promise that "an oxygen cocktail is equivalent to a three-hour walk in a pristine forest" and grocery stores sell canned oxygen that they swear will turn ordinary glasses of juice into oxygen-rich cocktails. Meanwhile, producers of so-called lung teas such as Enkhjin, Ikh Taiga and Dr. Baatar claim that their products are capable of filtering pollutants from their customers' airways. "It first removes toxins from the blood, then turns them into mucus, and then all the plants contained in the tea help strengthen the human immune system," said Baatar Chantsaldulam, CEO of Dr. Baatar.

Unfortunately, it is becoming an increasingly far-fetched prospect. Over the past 30 years, 20% of the entire population has moved to Ulaanbaatar, and many of them are displaced farmers, herders and rural residents who have come to the city to find work. They are too desperate to live in the Gobi desert, but too poor to afford housing, so they live in gers, one-room tents heated by coal stoves that can be built, or dismantled, in a couple of hours.

According to Newsweek, there are more than 180,000 gers in the city, and all that coal (or wood or trash can be burned to warm up during those freezing winters) is responsible for most of the air pollution; WHO estimates that 80 percent of Ulaanbaatar's airborne pollutants come from ger stoves, compared with 10 percent from transportation, 6 percent from power plants and 4 percent from "solid waste." The Times reports that Prime Minister Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh announced in January that the transportation and use of raw coal in Ulaanbaatar will be banned after April 2019 (this has generated a lot of concern as it will cause another economic crisis among those mining, selling and transporting coal). Meanwhile, the Ulaanbaatar Clean Air project is doing what it can to help, trying to replace Ger residents' coal stoves with cleaner, more energy-efficient models. It is also trying to pressure the government to seek affordable permanent housing options for this section of the population. "Ulaanbaatar may be the coldest capital in the world, but it doesn't have to be the most polluted," said Coralie Gevers, World Bank Country Manager for Mongolia. "Improving air quality management in Ulaanbaatar and reducing pollution concentrations would prevent disease, save lives and avoid huge health costs."
ON THE ROAD
12 Sep 2021 Leave a comment
in FEELINGS Tags: escape, go away, Travel, Vanishing





VISIT ITALY: MIRAMARE CASTLE
28 Jul 2021 3 Comments
in TRAVELLING Tags: Austrian, Castle, castles, friuli venezia giulia, HOLIDAYS, miramare, Princess Sissi, Sissi, Travel, TRAVELLING, trieste
Near Trieste, on a rocky spur overlooking the sea, stands the Miramare Castle, once the southern gate of the Austrian Empire. A place of wonders where Princess Sissi stayed during her long travels in Europe. A treasure trove of history and legend that tells the tragic story of its founder, Maximilian of Habsburg.








VISIT ITALY: PANAREA
27 Jun 2021 Leave a comment
in TRAVELLING Tags: HOLIDAYS, Panarea, Travel, travellers, TRAVELLING










