Soft disclaimer: these are notes that I keep editing and adding to over time. They are not final and are not intended to be a manual or a summary of my philosophical approach to walking. They may contain mistakes or sentences that, over time, no longer apply to me.
*Published in March 2026, last edit September 2024
When I first started walking over 20 years ago, my disastrous debut was a trip to the Isle of Skye in Scotland. After spending a week travelling by car and camping with friends, I said goodbye to them at the airport and took the bus back to the island. It was a disastrous start because on the coach I lost one of the first mobile phones my father had forced me to have, as it was my first trip alone to completely unfamiliar territory.
I had to wait for the bus to return my phone, which had been found in the meantime. I fondly remember the absurd experience of trying to talk to a man at the bus depot, who answered me in a strong Scottish accent mixed with Gaelic. A matter of seconds later, I found myself making a phone call from his office to a switchboard operator in Glasgow, who spoke clear, rapid English with a ringing voice.
I spent the next two days walking around the village and looking at maps in a shop, memorising the routes I could take during the day. When my phone was returned, I set off, only to discover to my surprise that I had taken the wrong turn at the first junction and had to walk ten kilometres in the opposite direction.
Despite these two incidents, the trip was a success. I realised that setting off with a huge, heavy, cumbersome rucksack filled to the brim had not been a great idea. The same was true of my choice of shoes and socks, rookie mistakes. The most I managed was 10 or 15 kilometres before deciding to catch a bus to the next campsite.
You always learn a lot from failures like these, but ultimately, the most important things are weight and pace.
I first realised that my father had grown old one day when we were walking together. He stopped me and said that I was walking too fast and that we should stop. My father was also a heavy smoker, but that was one of those moments when I realised that I often find myself walking slightly faster than other people. It's not something to boast about and is not meant to be offensive, but your own pace is the most important thing when walking long distances.
I must also say that, in recent years, more people have warned me before walking with me even for a stroll, as if they expect me to always walk at a fast pace, or as if I have too many expectations of them, or as if it were some kind of competition.
The big difference between walking alone and with others is that when I walk alone, I can go at my natural pace, balancing speed and posture. Although I enjoy walking with others, I often end up with back pain, to the point that I found myself mentally counting two steps and taking one in order to keep up.
While I greatly value walking with others, it's clear that walking alone offers a different level of energy and immersion in the territory and nature.
I remember that after spending three weeks alone in the Australian rainforest, I went to Melbourne to visit my friend Travis. We decided to take a walk together to a nice forest nearby, with landscapes similar to those I had encountered in other places. However, everything was much easier and more enjoyable because we shared the tension and fatigue, and took breaks together. Sometimes I was tired, sometimes he was tired, and we walked more slowly while talking. The sensory experience was much milder, as if we shared a sense of danger through our DNA. The first time I walked in the rainforest, instead, I remember never stopping to rest. My senses were extremely alert and every noise evoked apocalyptic scenarios. In fact, I mistook wallabies, which I had never seen before, for boulders rolling down the mountain; I freaked out when I heard a sequence of strange bird songs. I felt surrounded, and then I realised that there was a lyrebird in the bushes that could imitate all the other birds. Every rustle threatened to magnify in my mind, even though I knew there were no large predators in Australia.
The feeling was reminiscent of one from years gone by, around 2012, when we started exploring abandoned places outside Berlin. There were many of them and they were relatively easy to find.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification in around 1994, the Soviet army left East Germany, leaving these places defenceless and deserted in the forests almost immediately. So other than for photography, there was no great interest in these places. We ventured into Soviet military bases and entire Soviet cities, such as Wünsdorf, which had a population of 35,000 during the Cold War. When this exploration became a funded project of mine with the Bundesstiftung, I visited these places with a different mindset. However, my friends were not always able or willing to accompany me, so I visited many of these places alone, despite there being an explicit rule not to do so. They were dangerous, you could easily hurt yourself or get stuck for any number of reasons. In general, it is good practice not to do so. Compared to visiting them with friends, it felt completely different; there was tension in the air, even when you heard a door slam in the distance or found animal footprints or heard the floorboards creak. When you're with others, you can discuss which route to take and which places to avoid. You can laugh at sudden noises, and your nervous system is less on alert, so stimuli are registered in a much more digestible way.
Walking alone is therefore a matter of fatigue in all these stimuli, but also of cadence.
Walking alone is therefore a matter of fatigue in all these stimuli, but also of cadence.
When considering one's pace or sociality, the question of cadence arises. Walking at your own pace enables you to establish a strong relationship between time and distance. While we are all aware that these two elements are directly proportional in physics, becoming aware of your own pace enables you to predict exactly where you will be and when, making looking at a map or timetable the same thing. This relationship is almost primordial, with no explanation other than the passing of time and the ability to walk at your own speed. Being aware of this relationship between space and time is especially essential on long journeys, for example when looking for a place to sleep, wondering whether we will make it to a supermarket in time, and considering how much energy we need to get through the day, especially when the sun goes down, or whether you will arrive at the ferry on time.
One of the most amusing things I remember about walking in Norway is that ferries are free for pedestrians and cyclists, which I thought was a hugely revolutionary sign of civilization. Wanting to address this issue and the right of way in depth, I will skip the considerations for now, but one of the scenarios that often happened to me was that, on the road leading to the ferry, when I saw it already at the port, I resigned myself to the fact that I would miss it and that I would have to wait for the next one, given the pace, time and space, it was clear to me.
Instead, seeing me coming from afar, on foot, with my trolley, it was often the ferry operators who wanted to wait for me. Seeing me arrive, they encouraged me to hurry up and signalled to me. Despite their kindness, it was torture because it forced me to speed up, so I was already at my maximum pace. I couldn't afford to walk much faster, not to mention the additional fatigue. The result was always the same: they waited for me, and I smiled broadly, but running that last kilometre was always awful, partly because I felt guilty about them waiting for me and delaying the service — a service that, incidentally, I wasn't paying for.
Another fundamental aspect of walking is managing our weight: finding the right balance between what we need and what we carry, and distributing the load between our shoulders and the rest of our body.
We are used to moving only our own weight, which has less of an impact on our bodies. If we limited ourselves to walking without carrying anything extra, we could walk for much longer.
Try it for yourself: go for a walk in the mountains with a rucksack, climb up to your campsite, pitch your tent and leave everything inside it, then walk again without any weight. You will realise how liberating it is.
I had the same feeling when my parents sent me to swimming lessons as a teenager. I didn't really want or need to learn, but my parents felt that we children should learn properly, partly to ease their anxiety about us going to the seaside. My mother enrolled me at a swimming pool in Casoria, in the province of Naples — as it was the only pool in the area, it was also used for competitive swimming. After the first few months, once I had learned to swim, they convinced me to join the competitive team, as this was the next logical step. As part of our training for competitions, we had to swim with a wet cotton T-shirt on, which made it feel as though we had a heavy ballast attached to our bodies. When you finally go back to swimming without it, you feel free and like you're moving much faster.
But how can we strike a balance between carrying what we need to survive and keeping our rucksack light? I would argue that there is no comprehensive, general, objective answer to this question that works for everyone and in all environments. Anyone who promises one is simply overlooking too many factors.
We should minimise what we carry, carefully choosing what we need and what we don't. I have adopted the practice of making this kind of decision once I return from a trip, while the experience is still fresh in my experience, because we can feel the weight of the good or bad decisions we have made, and learn from our mistakes.
Years ago, I went on a trip with my girlfriend at the time. In point of fact, she was the one who pursued my photographic expeditions, but our relationship and our mutual desire to share our experiences led us to decide to proceed together. She was younger and I had already been travelling alone for a long time, making lots of mistakes, taking 20 pairs of socks and 50 T-shirts, and stuffing things I would never need into my bag at the last minute. On that occasion, I imposed a rule that was as necessary as it was cruel: everyone would carry the rucksack they had packed, no exceptions. It was a cynical approach, but it was the only way to learn, because spending hours talking about it would not have had as much of an effect as the experience of doing it oneself. The body remembers.
Weight is always the result of careful consideration. For example, if the trip is very long, you will eventually realise that it is unrealistic to expect yourself to carry enough clothes and underwear to last the entire trip, so you will need to wash them. In this case, we can significantly reduce the number of items we need to bring because washing has already been taken into account. I'm not suggesting having only one outfit to wear and one to wash, but you'll find that on every trip, there are many opportunities to reduce what you've brought with you.
It should also be noted that many of our decisions are based on a comparison of the best- and worst-case scenarios. At the start of my trip to Norway, I brought very few changes of clothes with me and spent the first week in incessant, torrential rain. I was forced to buy more socks because there was no way to dry the ones that got wet. Often, the preparations made for the worst-case scenario are unnecessary, but you have to find a good compromise between tempting fate and not preparing at all.
It was all these considerations that led me to build my first trolley.
As a visual person, I don't usually resonate with the work of others, but I do take inspiration from books.
Here is a small selection of books that have been important to me on my travels.
Here is a small selection of books that have been important to me on my travels.
