#BeCycling, BeHappy
#BeCycling, BeHappy
We are avid outdoor lovers: from mountaineering to surfing, from climbing to cycling. Driven by the strong desire to explore our abilities, distant countries and peoples, in 2014 we began a 6-year project that brought us to know the world: From seven hills to seven passes.
From 2014 to 2020 we drew a line long 60.000 kilometers (38.000 miles) on the map, cycling through 35 countries without ever returning home. The pandemic forced us to return to Italy, but from this interruption new projects related to the bicycle as a lifestyle were born.
BeCycling is the container of these projects: promotion of sustainable mobility, publication of articles related to travel on two wheels, and our BeCycling Tours, guided tours with which we want to educate and encourage people to travel slowly and consciously.
For this reason, in the summer of 2021, we decided to graduate as Trekking and Bike Touring Instructors to combine our passion with the right skills. We would like to make you travel and inspire you, but above all we want to make you the protagonist of the changes our planet needs to keep on striving.
daniele carletti
Engineer by education, globetrotter by vocation. Moved by curiosity and obsessed with the pursuit of perfection. If he’s not pedalling, you’ll find him building or fixing something. He loves to set up his mobile workshop wherever he is, hanging his bike from a tree branch in a public park, or turning it upside down in a hotel room. Always up to date on the latest technological advances in the field of cycle travel and bicycles, after all, isn’t the bicycle the best expression of technology at the service of humans and nature?
simona pergola
Trained as a humanist, a professional in tourism and a naturalist in his spare time. She has always cultivated the desire to unite these three aspects of her life. With the world tour From 7 Hills to 7 Passes she finally fulfilled the dream of being on the move every day, sleeping every night in a different place, immersing herself in different languages, cultures and naturalistic landscapes that she had, until then, only seen in documentaries. Festina lente – “hurry up slowly” – the ancients said, and perhaps they were already thinking about the bicycle!
There is no happiness for him who does not travel, Rohita! Thus we have heard. Living in the society of men, the best man becomes a sinner; therefore, wander! The feet of the wanderer are like the flower, his soul is growing and reaping the fruit; and all his sins are destroyed by his fatigues in wandering; therefore, wander! The fortune of him who is sitting, sits; it rises when he rises; it sleeps when he sleeps; it moves when he moves. Therefore, wander Rohita!
Daniele and Simona
Both addicted to outdoor activities: from mountaineering to surfing, from sport climbing to cycling. Driven by the strong desire to explore our limits, countries and distant cultures we decided to saddle up our bicycles and meet the world. We are members of the Amateur Sport Association Gruppo Sport & Natura, usually involved in social activities and now engaged with this brand new challenge. Our greatest ambition is that this could be not only an experience of two individuals but of an entire community, becoming an example to those believing that the direction in which this planet is heading can still be changed, a world that now unfortunately runs at the speed of the most polluting means of transportation.
When I first read this extract of a sacred Indian text I was waiting at Fiumicino airport, in the summer of 2007, my destination was Camino de Santiago with just a backpack on my shoulders. It was a fantastic experience of spiritual growth and physical rehabilitation, and I couldn’t imagine at that time that this would have been the first of a long series of voyages . Since then, in fact, I have never stopped. Tirelessly chasing my passion for nomadic wandering, often combining my adventures with the need to practice sport. 5 months homeless in Spain, 15 days of solitary hitchhiking in Morocco, many weeks of sea and mountains, between surfing in the Atlantic Ocean and hiking, climbing and mountaineering in the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Apennines. Then came the bicycle. In 2011, to return home (after living a year in Madrid) I connected two capitals, the Spanish and Italian, in a single journey of 4,000 miles that lasted a bit more then three months. The discovery of this extraordinary means of transport completely changed my life. Even if Rome is not a painless city for cyclists (especially for me, living in the mountainous periphery), I started to use the bike exclusively for my urban mobility, and despite the title of Telecommunications Engineer and a research position at the university, the desire for adventure and a thirst for discovery gained the upper hand on any “safe” working position. This world tour project had been in my mind since then, until the summer of 2013, when during 15 days of solitary hiking in the “Alta via dei Silenzi” ( a harsh and challenging hike in the Friuli Dolomites ) I had the idea of cycling the highest mountain passes in the world. However this project is not just a sporting challenge, it is much more. It was born from the need to seek a different way of life, attempting to escape a system imposed by an extremely rigid, monotonous and unsatisfying society. And it is also a support for humanitarian initiatives and a promotional vehicle for the bicycle as the ultimate means of transport. Every now and then I take Camino de Santiago’s guide book and re-read the extract of the sacred Indian text that my mother wrote upon it many years ago. I realize how far I have walked with my shoes or cycled with the tires of my bike since then. But most of all I think about the route I still have to cover. It ‘s nice to know that the world is so big.
Simona, I have been working in the tourism industry for more then 13 years, and I have seen the world through the hundreds of people that daily animate hotel life. I started working soon after school so I did not have much time to travel. I lived in England for a short period, then a brief journey to Thailand and loads of short trips in Europe all focused on my great passion: sport climbing and mountaineering. Since I was a child I had the chance to spend much of my spare time in the open air, my holidays were divided between long walks in the Dolomites and lot of swimming in the crystalline waters of Southern Italy. My ideal journey is one with no regular comfort, as I used to spend a lot of time in my family’s old country house where there was no heating, no lighting and no drinkable water, where the only comfort was the fire place in winter time. I remember not enjoying very much wandering through the mountains, but later on, all of a sudden I realized that mountains were my greatest passion so I devoted most of my spare time to climbing, hiking, winter mountaineering, etc.. My passion is so strong that I wanted to share it with others so I attended a sport climbing training course and for two years I have been working at a climbing centre in Rome (Vertical Park). I love every aspect of mountains but above all the fatigue of conquest, and it is always a conquest even without reaching the summit. These last few years I have begun to explore mountains in every season, attending winter and summer mountaineering courses, developing a strong respect regarding these places, the top of which mark the border of the earth with the sky. The bicycle, I remember cycling since I can remember. I remember mainly tests of courage which were launching my bicycle down the garage slope, in my neighborhood of Colli Aniene. Bicyclesto me mean exploring, thanks to the bicycle I could go beyond the boundaries of my neighborhood, to go beyond the gate of the camp in summer to buy croissants in the village. Besides walking, bicycle are the very first means of transportation that we learn to use and to love and are the only ones that can be used at any age, they always give the same pleasure. My life is not only earth but also water, and so I started surfing and canyoning, realizing day by day that I like the many possibilities of life. That is why I decided to follow Daniele on this project and amazing journey. This is the possibility of possibilities, a journey where anything can happen. The realization of my desire to see the world not as a tourist but as a traveller, and to transform this desire into a manifesto of changing the habits of the other inhabitants of this planet.
