IT ALL STARTED WITH A BROKEN PHONE.
India · 2022
The trip that unexpectedly became the beginning of Volata di Peluca.
In 2022, I went to India to ride solo across the north of the country.
It sounds like a cliché, but that trip really did change my life. On day one, I rode for more than six hours in nonstop rain until my iPhone died.
I ended up buying a Xiaomi from a shop outside Nalagarh that was half grocery store, half phone shop — rice, chargers, and sodas all on the same counter.
Telling the story as it happened.
I could not access my SIM, so WhatsApp was out. Instagram was the only app I could log into, which meant Close Friends Stories became my way of keeping in touch with friends and family.
First it was the broken phone. Then the food, the people, the roads, the bike, and all those tiny moments that make travel addictive.
Without really meaning to, I had started making a travel channel.
I loved telling the story while I was still living it. My loyal audience of about forty people — mostly friends and family, so of course they said they were hooked — kept watching.
One of the last days, riding back to Delhi to return the bike, I remember thinking: “What if this could be my life? What if I could actually do this for a living?” It was not a plan.
Just an idea I could not shake.
A name that could mean anything.
Back home, I still had a full-time job and could not exactly disappear around the world, so I started with the other half of the equation: cars. I wanted a name that was not my own, something that could eventually become bigger than me.
My dad is Italian, and cars have always had that connection to Italy for me. The name had to sound Italian.
A little later, before a Christmas dinner, my friend Ernest dropped a sticker in our group chat that said “volatta di peluka.” It meant absolutely nothing, which was exactly why I liked it. I cleaned it up a little: Volata di Peluca.
Instagram was available. TikTok was available.
YouTube was available. Even volatadipeluca.com was free.
That was it. Volata di Peluca was born — and it all started in India with a broken phone.
