Darinka Montico
Darinka Montico
Darinka Montico (born 28 October 1980) is an Italian blogger and travel author.
[1] She is the first and only known woman to have walked the all length of Italy from Sicily to Piedmont alone.
She was born on 28 October 1980 in Verbania and lived with her family in Baveno, a small town by Lake Maggiore in Piedmont for her first 19 years.
As soon as she finished high school she left Italy and moved to London where she graduated in Photographic Arts from Westminster University.
After graduation she lived in a number of countries adapting to whatever job she found.
To name a few, she's been a bikini bartender (skimpy) in Western Australia's mine sites, an English teacher in Laos where she additionally opened a restaurant/art gallery, a stripper in New Zealand, a volunteer worker in Thailand after the Tsunami, a graphic designer in Canada, a bar tender in Hong Kong and so on. [2] In 2013 she eventually moved back to London and found work as an Angel (a masseuse of poker player's heads throughout the game) and after a heart felt breakup she finally decided to change her life and focus only on her passions and created the Walkaboutitalia project. The idea was simple, walk the all length of her home country, without money to test the solidarity of her people. [3] As she walked she carried a box with an ear sculpted on the lid in which she collected notes about dreams, written by the people that would host her for free. She started walking in Palermo on 21 March 2014 and walked 2910 km in 7 months going up North the her home town zig zagging. She kept writing her adventures in her blog as she walked "in order to survive, trust replaced money throughout my walk" she explained throughout the talk she gave at independently organised TEDxTrento 2014, after she accomplished her project.
After the walk she wrote the book Walkaboutitalia- L'Italia a piedi, senza soldi raccogliendo sogni, that came out in May 2015, edited by Edizioni dei cammini, in which she talks about her life, the meaning of walking, the people she met and their dreams.
In order to promote her book and spread the positive message of unconditional trust [4] she decided to tour Italy again with a motorized bicycle.