By Simone Agliati
Hi everyone!
My name is Simone, I’m 31, and I was born and raised in Lugano, between the grotti on the lakeshore and the trails that climb straight up into the mountains.
I’ve always travelled, and always with the same enthusiasm as on the very first day: that urge to set off that never wears out. If anything, the more you feed it, the more it grows. In recent years my gaze has turned above all to Africa, a continent that every time gives me back something I didn’t know I was looking for.
So what does travel mean to me?
For me, travel is listening. Travel is encounter.
By profession I’m a pedagogist, an educator and a special-needs teacher. I work with young people with autism, Down syndrome and other cognitive and behavioural differences. Every day they remind me that to understand someone you first have to be quiet, and then meet them exactly where they are. You rarely need to speak the same language. You need to be there.
That’s how I try to travel. I always set off with my camera around my neck, but the images I bring home often don’t fit on the memory card: a recipe cooked the same way by three generations, a stranger waving you over to sit at their table, a shared silence that needs no translation.
I don’t collect destinations. I collect tables I’ve been invited to.
This year, though, the compass turns west. My partner will be working in Peru, and together we’ll explore the country: not as tourists passing through, but as people who have time to stop, come back and become familiar faces.
In the World Unique Journal I’ll mostly be writing about people: those who welcome us, those who guide us, those who teach us to see a place from the inside.
Follow us here and on Instagram. See you on the road.
Simone
