Exploration is a serious matter
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“In our hearts we know that any limit can be overcome. A safe starting point is to have faith”
Alex Bellini explorer, mental coach and environmental communicator
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Biography
Explorations
"I was born in Aprica (Sondrio, Italy) in 1978. It is from the mountains that I learn my first lesson: to cling to the rock and hold on, always looking for a foothold, even when the support seems to be lacking. It is this philosophy that since the year 2000 has pushed me to explore the most hostile environments on our planet.
In 2001 I ran the Marathon des Sables, a 250 km stage race in the Sahara desert.
In 2002 and 2003, I walked through Alaska, pushing a sled for a total of 2,000 kilometers.
In 2005 I rowed alone for 11,000 km across the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean for a total of 227 days.
In 2008 I did it again and I rowed 18,000 km across the Pacific Ocean, from Peru to Australia, in 294 days, alone once again .
"If I quit now, I'm sure that I will want to cross the Atlantic again sooner rather than later. If I stop now,
I will live the rest of my life wondering if I had reached my limit or if there was energy inside me to resist and go on one more day.
I would never have the answer, so I'll go ahead. Because it is the only, perhaps the simplest, thing to do."
In 2011 I ran 5300 km across the United States: from Los Angeles to New York, in 70 days.
In 2017 I crossed the Vatnajokull, the largest glacier in Europe (Iceland) with skis and a sled in 15 days.
Since 2019 I have been involved in the
10 rivers 1 Ocean project with the aim of navigating the ten most polluted rivers in the world.
To find out more, visit 10rivers1ocean.com
and the last project:
In 2024 Eyes on ice: a journey to the epicenter of global climate change. This is the title of the project with the latest generation fat bike, crossing Alaska with the intention of placing emphasis on the "polar question" and climate change.
Inin
Since 2014 I have been working with the psychology of maximum performance. I support athletes from various sports including golf, tennis and sailing and other professionals in the mental management of maximum performance.
Eyes on ice
Although the polar regions are critical to our health and well-being and indispensable in balancing the Earth’s systems and climate, when it comes to the poles, people’s knowledge is very limited.
When we think of the polar regions, we tend to think of them as vast, remote, and pristine. And yet, despite their remoteness, both our history and our future are tightly linked to the cryosphere.
The poles are home to extraordinary biodiversity, with new species and new genes being constantly discovered. Polar regions are the home of and provide food and livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of people, and they regulate our climate. From Reykjavik to Fiji, our lives are fundamentally and intimately connected to the poles.
Through the newly launched 3-year project called EYES ON ICE Alex Bellini and his team will give polar issues a voice for a greater protection of polar regions and thanks to important collaborations with scientific partners, they are committed to taking a leading role in some of the challenges related to understanding and protecting polar ecosystems.
The initiative is structured with a three-year program and will focus on three areas: Alaska, Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. It starts in 2024 with a bike trip across Alaska, continues in 2025 with a crossing of Greenland and ends, in 2026, with an attempted crossing of the Arctic Ocean to the North Pole.
Through these three expeditions we want to continue on the path begun years ago with the 10 rivers 1 ocean project, which combines the empiricism of exploration with the strength of testimony that becomes dissemination.
OCEAN CROSSINGS
Atlantic Ocean: Genoa (Italy) – Fortaleza (Brazil) 11.000km in 227 days from 18th September 2005 to 2nd May 2006.
This is the story of a record-breaking adventure, but also the story of a 27-year-old guy who, with indomitable spirit and a lot of patience, made an impossible dream come true.
On September 18 2005 Alex left Quarto (Genoa) in an attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean alone by rowing boat. This departure is preceded by two failed attempts in 2004, the last of which ends with a shipwreck on the island of Formentera after only 23 days of navigation. Alex is saved, does not report severe consequences, but his boat is irreparably destroyed by the impact. Atlantic Ocean: Genoa (Italy) – Fortaleza (Brazil) 11.000km in 227 days from 18th September 2005 to 2nd May 2006.
This is the story of a record-breaking adventure, but also the story of a 27-year-old guy who, with indomitable spirit and a lot of patience, made an impossible dream come true.
On September 18 2005 Alex left Quarto (Genoa) in an attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean alone by rowing boat. This departure is preceded by two failed attempts in 2004, the last of which ends with a shipwreck on the island of Formentera after only 23 days of navigation. Alex is saved, does not report severe consequences, but his boat is irreparably destroyed by the impact. If the crossing of the Atlantic was for Alex a test of tenacity and stubbornness, the expedition across the Pacific was something very different.
After 294 days and 3 million rowings, Alex faces very dangerous weather conditions. On December 13, one hundred kilometers from land, Alex decides to stop navigation and activate the EPIRB system.
Alex is assisted by the Australian tug Katea who brings him safely to Newcastle.
Giving up on this great goal after chasing it for almost a year is extremely hard, but at the same time it is proof of maturity. There are some criticisms to which Alex will reply that “the value of a man is not judged by his successes, but by the dreams that live inside him and guide him”.
Alex still describes this mission as the greatest success of his life.
Exploration is a serious matter
with Alex Bellini
to listen the podcast in ITA
on Spotify here
Trip to Oblivia
The stories, experiences and reflections of an exceptional traveller, extreme record holder and one of the most followed environmental communicators, shed light on the mental "traps" that make us helpless, inconsistent and inconclusive in the face of the drift of the environment in which we live .
The evidence of climate change, the mountains of plastic in rivers and seas, the waste that plagues our cities, the land that becomes desert is not enough. In the face of environmental crises, we are tempted to give up on doing our part, neglecting our impact. Why?
Maybe because, whether we want it or not, we all live in Oblivia. In this imaginary "bubble", made up of beliefs, prejudices, mental mechanisms that have their roots in the history of evolution and human psychology, the inhabitants dance with pink glasses, eat cotton candy and, in their narrow world, everything seems far away and they lost in a short-sighted vision.
But is it possible to escape Oblivia and save the Earth?
In Oblivia, in this physically non-existent yet so real place, everyone lives "happily insensitive" and a thousand miles away from the behaviors we should adopt to protect the planet and ourselves.
Why do we experience a seemingly irreconcilable tension between thoughts, dispositions and actions, when what is at stake is precisely our living environment? What cognitive and behavioral biases populate Oblivia, causing our ecological demands to fail? Can we overcome them? Will we be able to play this vital game for all of us human beings with more coherence and effectiveness?
Alex Bellini asked himself this in this book in which he addresses one of his most arduous and exciting explorations ever, that of our ecological mind.
Alex is navigating the ten longest and most polluted rivers on the planet, with the aim of documenting, in the wake of waste before it reaches the sea, the many faces of the ecological crisis, and to understand what complicates man's relationship with himself and with the environment in which it lives. Starting from the story of some of his many experiences and the many encounters that marked his "navigations around the world", Alex takes us with him to investigate what lies at the basis of this disconnect between our thoughts and our ecological actions . It does so by raising questions that save us from inertia and push us to take responsibility... And so, in freeing ourselves from the chains of Oblivia, we risk saving the environment too."
