Culture

Like a skinny ant

"Mongolia, China, Tibet and Nepal are infinitely big. Asia is infinitely big. When you cycle through it alone you are a skinny ant with a tent and a sleeping bag..." So begins Alessandro De Bertolini's account of his solo bicycle exploration of Asia. 7,500 kilometres in 75 days, to connect physically but also ideally two places, two solidarity projects long supported by Montura: the "Ger Camp" in Ulan Bator and the "Rarahil School" in Kathmandu. Travelling through deserts and mountains from the Gobi to Everest Base Camp, encountering different ethnic-linguistic minorities, customs and traditions, Alessandro's journey has encompassed much of the Asian continent. From Mongolia to Nepal via the Chinese regions of Inner Mongolia, Nigxia with the Yellow River, Gansu with the remains of the Great Wall of China and the UNESCO site of the Rainbow Mountains, the Qinghai of the great lakes, the Tibet of the immense highlands. A project born in 2017 - after returning from the cycling trip to North America from which the book and film of the same name "It's my home for three months" were born - elaborated at length due to the objective complexity of the journey and also supported by the CNR-National Research Council of Rome on the occasion of its centenary and by other cultural and scientific institutions: MUSE-Museo delle Scienze, Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino, Centro Studi "Martino Martini" of the University of Trento, and with the collaboration of the Italian Embassies of China and Mongolia.