Acrobat of the Road: THE BOOK

This is the cover of “Hitch-hiking in the Axis of Evil - By thumb through Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan”, a book heartedly written to spark everyone`s wanderlust while documenting the hospitality of one of the most stigmatized regions on Earth.

Its 264 pages, maps and photos await those eager for real travel chronicles, inspired by the most challenging and intense chapter of my round the world hitch-hiking expedition.

The book portrays the hospitality experienced while hitch-hiking in those lands nicked the Axis of Evil by George W. Bush. Where mass media only forecasted terrorism and danger, I would day by day stumble upon the most genuine and touching samples of human solidarity. During the war, American pilots proudly claimed their combat planes soared close enough to the ground to see the eyes of camels and the turban of their herder. However, they showed no interest in the lives, struggles and hopes of those whose heads they flew over. In 2005, I hitched 60,000 km from Belfast, Northern Ireland to the heart of the Islamic World in order to explore everyday life in Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

The resulting pages are a vehicle of understanding, a call for empathy and an attempt to recover the kaleidoscopic diversity of one of the world’s most stunning regions.

The book also hopes to deliver inspiration for those searching for a nomadic sustainable lifestyle, despite social mandates and media-inoculated paranoia. It fundamentally hints at how independent travel can become a platform for interaction with visited communities.

How to get a copy? You can buy my book and help Laura and I keep travelling and writing and the Nomadic Educational Project going.

HITCH-HIKING IN THE AXIS OF EVIL

By thumb through Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan

264 pages. Black & white photographs + 6 maps

ISBN: 978-987-29731-2-4

Price: EUR 22.00 includes registered shipping (almost) worldwide.

How to get a copy? You can buy my book and help Laura and I keep travelling and carrying on the Nomadic Educational Project by sending us an e-mail to acrobatadelcamino@gmail.com In exchange we will send you a Pay Pal request. Once paid, the book will be sent to you by registered post from Argentina.

BRIEF BOOK SYNOPSIS

On May 1st, 2005 Juan Villarino, an Argentinean hitch-hiker, hitches a ride in a sailboat from Belfast harbor to Scotland, with his steps bound for Middle East. Borrowing a snail’s strategy, he carries all he needs in a backpack, and stretches his thumb along both dusty roads and highways. He possesses no credit car or bullet proof jacket. His goal: to cross the heart of the Islamic World solely by hitch-hiking, in an attempt to prove that hospitality sprawls in a region portrayed as terrorist by the establishment media. Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan… As he moves across the vast globe Juan lives deliciously absurd events. He enters Iraq at night like a homeless, but ends up teaching hitch-hiking lessons in the Kurdish Parliament. In Teheran he sojourns with the Intellectual resistance against Iran’s Ayatollahs regime. He crosses Afghanistan village by village, having tea in a minefield, becoming a postman for a day, and dropping by a NATO base to fill up his backpack with foodstuff. While he travels, his pen frames those average people who sweat and work under any flag but never (ever) inhabit the headlines. The outcome is the book you hold in your hands: an ode to movement and a precise chronicle about one of the less travelled zones on Earth. Today, Juan keeps hitch-hiking the world and writing books by the roadside.

The cover you see now belongs to the Spanish –original- version, which was recently published in Argentina by Del Nuevo Extremo-RBA Publishing Group. The book is available in bookshops in Argentina and Spain. If you live somewhere else you can request a copy at acrobatadelcamino@gmail.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

IMAGES OF THE 36^th BUENOS AIRES INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR