Extreme Asia

After seeing the tragedies of the world protected by the steel of warships, on which he served, Navy Officer Gaetano Appeso decides to put a backpack on his shoulders and cross Southeast Asia alone, land of wonders and misfortune, recording the entire experience down in a notebook. From big cities to indigenous tribes living in the hinterland, the author collects dozens of fascinating and bizzarre stories told by the people he met along the way, convinced that the reality of a territory can be told through the voice of the people who live there and through their life experiences. The last story told, belongs to the author himself who, a few weeks before his departure, crossed the great island of Borneo, moving from village to village and documenting the customs and traditions of the tribal communities he met. The place that once was the land of cannibals and head hunters still keeps macabre secrets.

Gaetano Appeso, born in 1978, is an explorer and travel writer. He was a military reporter from 2013 to 2022 and has participated in several peacekeeping missions in Africa and Asia. Since 2015 he has collaborated with the University of Pavia on numerous projects. Gaetano has conducted many expeditions in remote areas of the planet, with the aim to document customs and traditions of indigenous comunities; his reports have been published on scientific and industry magazines. He wrote four books: E-mail from the Amazon (2014), Tiancháo, notebook of a trip to the East (2015) Mesoamerica, in the footsteps of the Feathered Serpent (2017) and Extreme Asia (2020).