Since the start Jyoti has lived in the India of the Indians; in the south with the Pillay, an engine-driver's family who adopted him like a real son, in the north - Nepal and Uttar Pradesh - with other friends. Then, always following new friends, in 1990 he reached Rajasthan.

"Jyoti was a different child, right from childhood. When most others of his age were enjoying the experience to grow up in true western fashion,  he was busy reading all about history, philosophy and religions. He was a well-read teenager and at 18, had  grown weary of his way of life - he found it meaningless and far too materialistic. At this point he decided to visit India."
(Jetwings Magazine)
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" His complexion and grey eyes make no pretence  to hide his Italian breeding, but his appearance and  apparel, demeanour and accent compel us to doubt our own judgement.
  A true villager by all means, he greets you, his hands folded, with a 'Ram Ram'."
(The Times of India)

1980-81

Following a friend to India
Jyoti completed art-school as a very promising drawer, but following his feelings he left for India in the end of 1980.
  "The seventies were over, and with them all the dreams of a generation older than mine. It was a time of disillusion, the 80's were opening up into that feeling of impotence and apathy that inevitably occurs whenever ideals fall. The new generation, brought up in the age of consumerism, seemed just to be concerned with a good fashionable look. Born as I was in 1961, I found myself to be in between two ages, too young or too old, neither of one or the other generation. It is so that I followed a friend to India...
  I was just 19, my first time abroad, no much money I had, not a word of English I knew. Suddenly I found myself there; it was definitely another world! I found myself utterly ignorant and at the same moment that I realised this, I accepted it. I surrendered to it so totally that automatically I just started learning and never stopped doing so".

The beginning
"It was the end of March, the beginning of the hot season in Maharashtra, the state of Bombay. A town, anyone, was lying at some distance behind the last old colonial villas. Immersed in gardens full of blossom, the villas were at the edge of the countryside which was spotted with villages between a wide river and a railway track.
  Not dissimilar to many foreigners also my companion and I rented a little room in one of those quiet villages".

For Jyoti's friend it was the fourth time in India and he spoke enough English not to be discriminated by the other foreigners.
  "I was much with the Indians so to develop a mixed up idiom of Hindi-English which definitely hindered me from getting any close to those foreigners. By the way I hadn't much to do with them at all, and soon my friend and I went separate ways".

In those days there was no vaccination for hepatitis - or if there was, nobody had informed him of it - so after a few months Jyoti got sick. After five days of drip and medicines he got well and also was cleaned up of the last money, and it was still one month until his flight back to Italy...

The end and new beginning
Without money, all that he had learned from the Indians proved its real utility. With surprise he saw that there was no problem with food "...being so cheap you just get it! The climate too is so pleasant that you need nothing at all! And if you have nothing, then you have nothing to lose and you are free!".

"It was from a few days that I was realizing my new state of consciousness, about this new awareness, a few days that I was taking the first steps into this unknown new state of being and I was moving around a lot".

Just behind the railway tracks there were the quarters for the railway workers. There Jyoti met a cheerful family cramped in a small room of just a few square metres and they got so close to each other that he moved in to stay with them, for twenty days he ate with them and he slept at their threshold under a mango tree in the garden.
  When the time came to go back to Italy, he left them leaving more than just his sleepingbag ... "We didn't forget each other and for all the time that I remained in Italy we wrote letters, and I sent them some money too. Back in India it was straight to them that I went and it was really coming back home".

1980-90

The first ten years
Jyoti used to follow his Indian family in all their transfers and wherever they went he was looked upon as the foreign son of the engine-driver S.K. Pillay. It was with them that he learned much of his Hindi, English, their strange alphabets and much more.
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  "But it was the life in the railway quarters itself, which was to be the best of schools, so like only a cantonment can be. Because our division, the 'South Centre Railways', embraces the three states Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka, you could in these quarters find people from any part of south India. A Hindu family from Tamil Nadu living side by side with a half-Portuguese Christian from Goa, next to a Muslim from Hyderabad, door by door with a Jewish family from Kerala!
   Even out of the railway quarters, those towns had much of variety. Beside the many castes of the local population there were Rajasthany tradesmen and sweet-makers, Tibetan refugees selling woollen sweaters, Nepalese watchmen and soldiers, Sikh taxi drivers and shopkeepers. Much more there were half naked tribal people from the jungles coming to the market, colourful gypsies of Iranian origin, saints and insanes from nowhere".
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With his open nature Jyoti easily got new friends in the surrounding villages and continued to discover the country "... especially by taking lifts with the trucks - a very common way of travelling for the locals and one of the best for sure".

Every summer Jyoti used to go back to Italy, not only to get a new visa but because the summer in his little village in the Sicilian mountains is really nice.
   "I also missed my books a lot and the time for a deep reading, especially about ancient history, philosophy and religions - this to gather knowledge about the past and from this understand the present. If in India I am much in the practical, in the west I am more in the theory".

One year in Italy he saw that it was more convenient for him to fly to Kathmandu instead of to Bombay and he decided to have a change. Over the years he spent all together one year in Nepal, and of course even there with the local people and in local dress. He stayed with the Nepalese as well as with the Tibetans.
   There he also got good contact with many foreigners and sometimes he led some of them to a deeper look and understanding of the surroundings. After being in Nepal he used to spend the rest of the winters in Uttar Pradesh in north India.

1990-96

Rajasthan
Following a very close friend from east Uttar Pradesh (R.K. Sharma) back to his village to celebrate his wedding, Jyoti reached Rajasthan in 1990.
  "My friend suggested to me that I should stay there with him forever. The idea was good but something went wrong with his projects and instead, my friend ended up settling in Delhi. Because of this I was left in a big house, not alone though, all the village was with me".
  Jyoti moved around a lot in the area, mostly by foot, gaining more and more new experiences and friends.

In 1992 he guided a couple from Sicily for twenty days, so thanks to them he could see the country through a tourist's point of view visiting forts, towns and museums!

In 1993 he met an old Rajput (the legendary warrior caste) from the Pushkar Valley, who was very impressed by Jyoti's behaviour and invited him to his village Nand.
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"Pushkar appears to be a very corrupted and touristic place which I happily would have avoided, but this old Rajput man became like a brother to me and I would continue to visit him every year. The valley itself is beautiful and the people was still quite traditional, the red turbaned Gurjar (cow shepherds), yellow turbaned Rawat and the white turbaned Jat (farmers), proudly wearing their traditional dress".
   Since he feels closer in spirit to a nomad, Jyoti was happy to change his former turban to a red one - the symbol of a shepherd - which a Gurjar offered him.

There, Jyoti ended up buying a camel and after two months he had not only learnt how to ride but also how to take care of it. Then one day he set off and all alone he rode more than 400 km towards the north-east, from the Pushkar valley to the state of Haryana.
  "This made me a reasonable camel rider so I could later help some friends who work with tourists and on one occasion I accompanied a group during a 12 day ride to Jaisalmer".
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The Raika
Pushkar is a holy place where every year under the full moon of November it is celebrated a sacred festival. At the same time, the biggest cattle fair of the subcontinent takes place outside the town, with thousands of camels gathered.
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At the camel fair in 1995 Jyoti met a group of the camel shepherd caste Raika/Rabari from the Godwar, who every year came from afar to sell the camel-offspring. They are like other nomads: very proud, close to each other, very suspicious of others and in general a very reserved people, but they became curious when they saw Jyoti.
  So when one of those Raika challenged him to follow them on their way back to their villages, Jyoti made the very hard, week long walk leading back the camel kids, and after that he gained some of the confidence of the Raika and a lot of their respect.
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"In November 1996 I was in the Pushkar valley again waiting for the camel market and the Raika. Almost every day I used to walk the nine kilometres from Nand to Pushkar without a real reason. Even if I some times had to send a letter or phone home, most of the time I was just going to sit for a while at the Sunset Café, just for curiosity, or maybe I was looking for some one...".