A THOUSAND LIVES IN ONE

A THOUSAND LIVES IN ONE

A LIFE IN CONTINUOUS EXPLORATION

I have lived and continue to live a thousand lives in one life.
Continually curious to know all that exists beyond what my eyes see and to understand all that my imagination creates.

Aware that there is something ”beyond” that cannot be explained but only experienced continuously, without pause and without end.
I am addicted to what is called unscientific and therefore all to be proven.
The pure Energy of Nature to continue to make it eternal.

Because that is how I am convinced I am, a composition of billions of Suns generating vibrations communicating with each other and in continuous transformation.

Without beginning and without end, visionary creations to be impossible to realize, because they do not need technology but only passion.
A passion that is transformed, thanks to the Love of life, into a frequency so silent and intense at the same time, that it unhinges all the limits and uncertainties of this mind of ours now corroded by the uniformity of thoughts capable of creating actions that build only ease and therefore weakness.
That weakness that extinguishes the soul, then, the unique meaning that makes life worth living even if it only lasts a blink of an eye or a single breath.

Biography

Empty quarter

The Calderan Line

ENTERPRISES and EXPLORATIONS.

EXPLORATIONS, ENTERPRISES, EVENTS AND TESTS, CARRIED OUT AS PREPARATION FOR THE EMPTY QUARTER

Every exploration, feat or test accomplished in a time span from 2006 to 2020 were realized as stages of specific preparation for the Rub Al Khali.
Crazy and visionary workouts refining year after year the techniques and method I had created 30 years earlier that amplified the concept of physical deprivation and exhaustion until it became a source of unlimited energy from which to draw resources for continuous improvement.

I describe only the most important ones.
Each one holds a meaning that was also important to me as a personal evolution and reflection.

SAUDI ARABIA | 2020 - February

Empty Quarter, Rub Al Khali

” On Feb. 2, 2020, a new page is written in the History of Exploration. A man has crossed, solo, the 1,200km of unbeaten sand, never ploughed on foot or by any animal or mechanical means by anyone before him.

A place shrouded in mystery, legend and secrets never revealed. 
The world’s largest sand desert, the Rub Al Khali (Empty Quarter), so large that it could contain France, Belgium and Holland all at once.”

Unwittingly, I find myself to be among the greatest living Italian explorers and to enter the History of Exploration.
I created the Calderan Line that is added in the geographic maps of the Arabian Peninsula and officialized by Google Maps as ”Historical Landmark” and that is added in the geographic maps of the Arabian Peninsula.
An ever-changing landscape of endless dunes made famous by expeditions undertaken in the 1930s and 1950s by Bertram Thomas, Wilfred Thesiger.

I became the last man to join that famous group, opening the last route, thought to be impossible, the direct route, to the center of the Rub Al Khali, from West to East.
This line, the Calderan Line, encapsulates not only the feat but also a philosophy of life, the meeting point between the extremes of the various realms of human knowledge, both scientific and instinctive and primitive, both material and spiritual. The middle way. The common sense that does not deny the extremes but draws guidance and information from them to generate useful tools usable by anyone on a common journey in the direction of safeguarding ourselves and the planet that has been our home for millennia

ABU DHABI | 2016 - December

The Dune Moreeb

The highest and best-known dune in the UAE at 300 meters high, it features a ‘slide’ with a 50-degree slope.

Known as the ”fear-inducing dune,” it is a veritable wall of sand that is impressive to look at from below.

Used in modern days for hill-climbing races with modified cars and motorcycles trying to reach the top without flipping over and sliding down.

In honor of the 45th national holiday of the Emirates, I made 45 non-stop climbs and 45 non-stop descents on very soft sand.

Total time taken 22 hours and 20 minutes during which I made 13,500 meters of ascent (just as much descent).

To have a comparison, Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, is 8,848 meters high.

This endeavor served me to understand how I would tackle the last 200km in Rub Al Khali in 2020 where the quality of the sands and the hundreds of climbs and descents faced presented similar aspects to the Moreeb Dune.

The manic repetition of the gesture carried out for many hours without stopping has the goal of achieving absolute perfection in its relativity, that is, the perfection of being able to automatically adapt to changes in external factors to the original, seemingly simple gesture, such as climbing a sand dune.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES | 2016 July

RunMadan

Event to raise awareness of the activities of the Al Jalila Foundation, a philanthropic organization dedicated to health founded by the Prince of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

I walked 150km nonstop in 28 hours, in the middle of summer, fasting on water and food, during Arab Ramadan, starting from the White Mosque (Shaikh Zayed) in Abu Dhabi to the Jumeirah Mosque in Dubai.
The route was not in a desert environment but skirted the main road connecting the two cities.

I have always believed that working out without water or food is no more difficult than being locked up for an hour in the gym sweating over a treadmill or lifting weights.
Various thoughts emerge in deprivation, and a recurring one has always been ”why can I do something that no other man in the world is capable of doing?
Is it a matter of body, mind, or soul?
Or am I simply an unconscious fool who always gets it right because I am protected by a guardian angel?”
I never knew, all I know is that I slaughtered myself to the bone with workouts that ”psychiatric pathology” is putting it mildly.

In the Islamic calendar, Ramadan(Arabic رمضان) is the ninth month of the year, of 29 or 30 days; based on the observation of the crescent moon.

According to Islamic practice, Ramadan is the month in which fasting (Sawm) is practiced, in commemoration of the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad (“The month in which the Quran was revealed as a guide for men and clear evidence of righteous direction and salvation.

Given that the Islamic calendar is lunar in nature, that is, it is based on cycles of synodic or lunar months, also known as “lunations,” it follows that each Islamic lunar month is identified with the first visible crescent in the sky of a crescent moon and thus begins with an ever-changing calendar date; therefore, even the date of the ninth month of that calendar changes every year.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES | 2017 - June

THE FASTING RUN

Ramadan 2017 summer in Dubai with about 50 degrees.
15 hours and 78 kilometers on a total fast of water and food.
I come up with the first fasting ”race,” from dawn to dusk, in which he can neither drink nor eat, as Bedouins did in times past in the desert.
The ”goal” is only inspirational toward breaking down so-called limits and how we can discover them in a very simple way: in deprivation.

The underlying concept is the focus of the importance of food and water and the need to exercise during the holy month of Ramadan by running and walking as many kilometers as possible, in the hours between Suhoor and Iftar, all while fasting.

The ”journey” – which began at 3:56 a.m. ended at 7:07 p.m. .
After 15 hours and 78 kilometers I arriveat Al Qudra Lakes from where I had started.

RunMadan (a combination of running and Ramadan), in my plans I wanted to develop it as a true competition with oneself, open to the public, non-competitive, and carrying a true message of returning to the Origin of the person.

Understand the true value of how much awareness we have of our own bodies, our own sensations, emotions and how much real perception we have of that limit beyond which you know you cannot go, on pain of tragic or at least very dangerous consequences.

Basically, I wanted it so a real ”contest” in which to let everyone who felt ready not to cheat themselves and not to tell themselves fantasies related to total beliefs based on self-satisfaction.

How many miles can I run or walk without drinking, without eating, and most importantly, without any medical assistance?
From the start onwards, this then, translated into kilometers and meters, how much could it be?
10?
30?
100?

Maybe I stop first even though I feel that I could continue but … if I felt sick , no one could help me.

So how far can I go?
I personally have never had these thoughts.

I left for each exploration ready to push to the last drop of life, and even when it happened that I was pissing drops of pure blood, totally dehydrated and with no more water, I pushed even harder, because I wanted to take my last breath while walking and with my eyes filling with desert ready to welcome me to a new rebirth.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES | 2016 - March

Tropic of Cancer

I started from the Saudi border and am at the Oman border after 365 km traveled in 128 hours.
I called it the hardest I had ever done up to that point.

The Tropic of Cancer is the northernmost circle of latitude on Earth where the Sun can appear directly overhead at its apex.
I had already traveled its line in Oman 9 years earlier.
My personal life was very challenging at that time; I was about to succumb to the events of a fate that was beginning to work within me.

I started out as if I had to take a life-saving drug aware of the possible side effects.
The ”desert” medication eventually worked, and it worked very well.

The Tropic of Cancer owes its name to the fact that in the past the Sun, on the summer solstice, was in the constellation Cancer; this is no longer true today, due to the phenomenon of precession of the equinoxes, but the name remains unchanged.

From an astrological point of view, on the same day the Sun enters the zodiac sign of Cancer: by definition, in fact, the arc of the fourth sign has as its starting point the point where the Sun is on the summer solstice.

Although the position of the tropics is often taken as fixed, the distance from the equator varies slightly over time due to shifts in the Earth’s axis of rotation.
In 2014, the tropic of Cancer is located at 23° 26′ 14.675″ north of the equator, approaching the equator by a few fractions of a second of latitude each year.

ITALY | 2013 June

Up & Down, Charity Event

24 nonstop hours climbing up and down a 14-step ramp.

77,280 total steps.
Event aimed at raising funds to be donated to charity to support therapies for a boy with a rare disease.

I remember the surreal situation I experienced when drunk guys would approach at night coming out of some club who would stop to watch and in some cases to pay compliments in other cases to yell insulting me for no reason.

There was a security guy present who was in charge of keeping watch during the night as I continued on my ascents and descents.

In my life I have always tried to help someone, in the real sense, the one you do it without expecting anything in return.

When I catch a train early in the morning , I take a hot milk and a brioche and bring it to a homeless man who has been sleeping all night under cartons and lying on the pavement.

A smile and a thank you is amply enough to give me a good day.

SAUDI ARABIA | 2012 December

Empty Quarter

First unofficial attempt to cross the Empty Quarter.
Arriving in Najran with my Saudi friend Jamil, a Rub Al Khali expert, we are blocked by the border military because of the dangerous nature of the area (Yemen war).

Adverse weather conditions and lack of special permits cause the attempt to be postponed.
The plan was to engage 3 more cars with Saudi drivers residing in Najran and attempt a crossing with provision for an escape route to the north.

During that week I talked to many Bedouins and obtained a lot of information.
In hindsight it was good not to attempt it, not to leave.
It would have been a failure, I was still too immature and too ”physical” as an approach, I was in a hurry to do it without considering the consequences of any unforeseen events.

The encounters made confirm that for Arabic literature the Rub Al Khali is a true legend.
We know that Arabic poetry originated in the form of long poems handed down orally before the advent of Islam.
Later, with writing, they became a kind of popular epic that, among other narratives, contains one in which the protagonist tries to cross the Rub Al Khali to retrieve a dowry for his future bride: the crossing, however, becomes a superhuman, practically impossible feat.
Even his companions all die and he is left alone and imprisoned in quicksand.
In the end only because of his prowess and heroism, his almost divine body manages to overcome this difficult ordeal.

There are also many other accounts of missing people.
For Bedouins, crossing the Fourth Void is a no-return venture.
For this reason, they try to go around it without venturing inside.

Reluctantly and fortunately, I decided to postpone,

EGYPT | 2012 August

SINAI Coast to Coast

250km 48 hours nonstop.

The venture was supported by broadcaster Al Jazeera to produce the documentary Son of the Desert, in which I met desert Bedouins during the period of Ramadan, fasting like them from dawn to dusk and collecting accounts of their lives.
Many of them have never seen the sea and do not know what snow is.

By my side was my blood friend Sheikh Ahmed Abu Rashid Al Jibali, advisor to St. Catherine’s Monastery for Sinai Tribal Affairs.

The reflection that accompanied me was related to the Great Deception, the most colossal scam ever orchestrated that involves all of us and continues to perpetrate itself silently, insidiously wedged so deeply into our brains that it has fused with our DNA, giving rise to hybrid thoughts, hybrid actions, hybrid children, completely subverting God’s laws or, for those who do not believe, subverting the laws of an origin that, however you want to spin it, is common to all.
Few realize it, even fewer understand it.

The Great Deception is represented by ourselves when, unaware, we continue to act convinced that we are free by carrying on battles that we make our own only because they are read or supported by someone.
Then all against the system.
Which one?
The multinational corporations.
Which ones?
The most important and influential multinational as far as I am concerned is represented by myself, as a person, as a man, a human being.
Here then is where the weapon of Love is not for going against someone or something but for accompanying someone to a path of awareness, completely ignoring the Great Deception built within us, which draws nourishment precisely from our attention projected outside ourselves.

ABU DHABI | August 2011

LIWA OASIS The Crazy Training

100km in 23hours in total absence of water, food and sleep.
Air temperature up to +59C Sand temperature as high as +74C.
I began with this test that I called ”crazy, but possible,” a series of continuous and higher intensity activities, all aimed at deprivation, going so far as to make as routine training the connection of two extreme points of the Liwa oasis (100km distance in a straight line over sand and dunes of the Empty Quarter) by walking them in any season (summer or winter) without the use of backpack, phones, water, food.I often asked myself the question of how I should train not only for exploring a desert but also for the life I was leading.
There was a path with common meeting points where running on soft sand was like spitting blood to reach a corporate budget amidst snakes called competition, unscrupulous colleagues and false friends.
By my own choice, I have always trained and worked for the pleasure of it.
The consequence has been to achieve some very rewarding results.
The goal was not to cross a desert or to have a certain amount of money, these were the consequence.
If we perform an act, whatever it may be, and expect nothing in return from it, we have achieved an important goal: to act for the pleasure of doing it, to act without compulsion, to act without an apparent why by letting the unconscious guide us, in short we are acting as free people.

EGYPT | December 2010

SINAI In the Footsteps of Moses

148km 23h 50mins

Exploration that retraced one of the probable tracks of the prophet Moses after his escape from Egypt.
Ideally, I followed the same route as the one that was shown by God to Moses that led him to the slopes of Mount Sinai.
I got the information about some parts of the route by comparing myself with many local Bedouins.

EGYPT | August 2010

SINAI Tih Plateau

154km 25h 10min

The Six-Day War (June 5-10, 1967) was a conflict fought between Israel on the one side and Egypt, Syria and Jordan on the other, within the Arab-Israeli conflicts and which resulted in a quick and total Israeli victory.
By the end of the conflict Israel had conquered the Sinai Peninsula.
Shell casings and objects from the blitzkrieg can still be found in the Tih Plateau.
Curiously, the Israelis used commercially unavailable and super-reliable special instruments as gps: the Bedouins of the Tih who were unaware of the ongoing war.

I drew a straight line starting in the south from where the mountains end to the road connecting Aqaba with Suez.
Exploration with many technical difficulties due to rocks, hidden gorges to overcome.
I think Moses used this area of Sinai in the past to better hide and protect his people.

YEMEN | August 209

Sab'atayn Desert

400km .
Attempt canceled on the day of departure from the capital Sana’a for security reasons.

Sab’atayn is a desert region that extends to the Rub Al Khali border.

As events in the country precipitated and security conditions worsened due to the war, the diplomatic staff of many embassies had left the country.
The day before I was supposed to leave the hotel in the capital for Sab’atain, confusing news had come in about the arrest/killing of at least 18 Al Qaeda terrorists who allegedly had a training camp on the edge of Sab’atain.
The Yemeni Minister of the Interior called me personally to give me the news, and knowing that a little crazy I was at that time, he put two policemen next to me with the specific task of not letting me out of the hotel for fear that I would still be going to Sab’atain with the my Yemeni friend Sharif and from there somehow begin my exploration.
An intense period.
The same flight with Yemenia Airlines was taken subsequent to a plane crash by the same company whose flight to the Comoros Islands led to the death of 153 passengers.
It was thought to be an attack, it was thought to be a malfunction, however malfunction or attack it was a time in history of great apprehension for those who had to move in Yemen.

Even today, the United Nations Children’s Agency has expressed concern about the economic impact of the crisis especially on women and children, their nutritional status and

On education.
Children are the most affected by the crisis in the country: millions of them suffer from malnutrition, no longer attend classes, and are sometimes employed in fighting.

PALESTINE | May 2009

SINAI Run for Love

105km + 210km

Starting from Ramallah (West Bank) I counted on traveling 540 km to Mount Sinai.
My mission stopped at the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel.
The Israeli military did not allow me to enter the Gaza Strip where waiting for me were the children of the Strip who were to run a symbolic ”marathon” with me as a sign of détente between the Arab-Israeli sides carrying the message of keeping children out of the conflict.
I had full support from both the Palestinian sports committee and the Israeli Ministry of Sports, but something jammed.

Inside the Strip, the UNRWA Director was waiting for me with cars and logistical support.

UNRWA is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East is a relief, development, education, health care, social services and emergency aid agency and is dedicated only to helping refugees from a specific region or conflict.
It is separate from UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, which is the only other U.N. agency dedicated to helping refugees and deals with all other refugees around the world.

It was a time of big dreams, I wanted and sought a solution to the conflicts in the Middle East, and I could only use my legs as a tool to open to a mutual dialogue without political or ideological contamination.

Instead, with much a marezza and disappointment I was greeted by the military’s machine guns pointed in my direction ready to fire.

After the first 105 km I had to get into my car and reach Egypt from where I continued my mission to Mount Sinai for another 210 km.

I vowed to return there with a renewed spirit but life events took me elsewhere.
Always in the Middle East.

OMAN | August 2008

The X of the Wahiba Sands

360km (160+200 ) 75hours total.
Temperature +54C

I had crossed them in 2007 in the summer.

I wanted to do a North-South/East-West ”one-two punch” with a short drive.

Having completed the first 160-km part the unexpected happened, because the team accompanying me, at the time an agency run by a South African of Anglo-Saxon descent, refused to continue to accompany me for the remaining 200km because of the very high risk of entering the Wahiba dunes again with extreme temperatures and technical difficulties.

It was complicated to manage (new permits to apply for, recruiting other people, a doctor who did not want to continue) that eventually found the solution to complete what had been started, taking full and total responsibility for what might happen from that point forward.

It was the first time I understood that for my Rub Al Khali I did not need agencies of experienced drivers or expert escorts.

I needed desert animals, beasts like me that if never give up until the end.

OMAN | August 2007

Wahiba (Sharqiya) Sands

First exploration in summer – 198km 4905min +58C
I had studied the mechanisms of dehydration very well and more or less all official texts report that in a desert, in summer, during the daytime, in the sun, one can lose up to 1.5 liters of water per hour.
I imagined how much water I could lose exploring and under continuous exertion climbing fiery dunes facing a desert in the middle of August.
In theory losing about 10 percent of one’s weight in water could cause one to die from dehydration, and honestly this 10 percent percentage never felt exact for me.
I knew that a professional endurance sports athlete (so one who does not possess high muscle mass, as is the case in power sports athletes) has greater resistance to dehydration than a sedentary individual and a power sports athlete but no study had ever been done taking a group of explorers who chose to perform a feat in the summer.
In the end I was the only one and the first in the world to test resistance to extreme heat with risk of dehydration by finding myself alone in the sands.
Compared to other deserts the Sharqiya Sands still hide small Bedouin dwellings, camps, and pens with goats and camels.
In recent years it has become very polluted especially in the first few kilometers and around the off-road track initially used only by Bedouins.
Heaps of garbage, remnants of tents, broken plastic chairs, canned goods all thrown around as if the Wahiba was an Ocean where everything could be thrown.

OMAN | December 2007

Tropic of Cancer

437 km 90 hr 20 min

I had always been attracted to the Tropic of Cancer, perhaps because I was born on July 1 and it is my zodiac sign.
I had delved over the years into the esoteric part and the symbolism attributed to the Tropic of Cancer, and as a second venture it already had all the characteristics of true exploration in it.

The constellation Cancer, is characterized by the presence of a number of stars that are dimly lit and are therefore very difficult to spot with the naked eye somewhat like I am in a desert.

These stars are easily spotted only when the precession of the equinoxes occurs, and in mythology it is said that it was only because of Hercules that the constellation had a chance to form.

I spent New Year’s Day 2007 alone in the desert away from everyone.
I read only after a few months a book by Henry Miller. ”Tropic of Cancer,” and this phrase stuck with me:

Ideas must be married to action (…).
Ideas cannot exist alone in the vacuum of thought.

QATAR | December 2006

The Diagonal

38hrs 5min
The first venture into exploration.

After participating in a few organized desert races (real races with rankings, times and prizes) to understand what the basic organizational needs were that I would then have to modify for a solo venture, I decided to tackle in ”exploratory” style the Qatari desert or rather to cross the entire Qatar Peninsula following its longest diagonal from the border with Saudi Arabia to the extreme tip overlooking the Persian Gulf.
I considered it a fair trade-off between risk and benefit having an extension of only 160 km from north to south and a maximum width of 80 km from east to west.

Between navigational errors and detours to avoid military zones, the total length traveled was 202 kilometers covered in 38 hours.

Following this event, I was proposed by the local Ministry of Sports a collaboration to develop endurance sports activities, which I reluctantly gave up (missing a very attractive opportunity indeed) so as not to have ”work” constraints that could limit my travel in the Middle East.
The taste of this venture had the flavor of a food never before tasted in a desert: real risk.
A first taste of what would be infinitely greater when I explored the Rub Al Khali.

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