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“The man who wants to learn must first read, and then travel to correct what he has learned.” CASANOVA

Welcome to My World

I don’t like talking about myself.

That’s precisely why, in my previous introduction, I had my motorcycle do the talking for me.

Today, I’ve decided to change my introduction a little. But rather than put myself through that exercise I dislike so much once again — talking about myself — I asked ChatGPT to write my portrait and introduce me, taking into account everything it had learned about me since I created my account.

So here it is, exactly as it wrote it.

Well… not quite. I did make a few tiny corrections in the end.

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Introducing yourself is never very easy.

Especially when you’ve spent a good part of your life changing countries, passions, means of transportation — and sometimes entire worlds.

I grew up in Turkey, then in Portugal. So, from an early age, the idea that one could have just one culture, one way of seeing the world, or one neatly ordered life probably seemed rather theoretical to me.

Turkey was freedom.

In winter, there was Mount Uludağ and skiing.

In summer, wild coves, the sea, mussel fishing and spearfishing.

And then, in everyday life, there were those endless walks with my Turkish friends through the surrounding countryside, among Kangal dogs and strays, with the feeling that freedom simply had no limits.

It was a childhood of wide-open spaces, nature and freedom — one that undoubtedly shaped the way I see the world and gave me that desire, which has never really disappeared, to always go a little further.

Then, in Portugal, there were horses.

Not Sunday riding. No!

I was fortunate enough to practise classical high school riding under the direction of Don José de Athayde, Chief Rider of the Portuguese School of Equestrian Art.

It was a world of discipline, precision and patience, where nothing is ever really left to chance, and where you learn that behind apparent ease lie years of work.

Horses became an important part of my life.

But I was never able to stop there.

Then there was an extraordinary love story. A tragedy. The loss of the woman I loved.

A turning point in my life.

So I set off on the roads of Africa, with my motorcycle as my passport.

That journey eventually gave rise to a book: Le Bandana bleu, contes d’une promesse.

There was diving too, with its depths and its silences and, further still, the very particular world of cave diving under the instruction of Pierre-Éric Deseigne.

Then came hot-air ballooning. My instructor was Michel Bergounioux, a legend in the field.

It is probably one of the strangest and most wonderful means of transportation ever invented: you take off knowing roughly where you are leaving from, but you very quickly accept that the wind will have a say in what happens next.

In the end, that isn’t so far from the way I have lived my life.

I flew across the English Channel and made many flights over Cappadocia alongside my friend Kaili, who has since passed away. Based in Göreme, Turkey, she had created the hot-air ballooning activity in the region around 1990.

I had the enormous privilege of flying alongside her and sharing part of that adventure.

I have travelled a great deal. Not always with a very precise plan. And above all, I have been fortunate enough to meet people who sometimes completely changed the course of a journey.

In Pakistan, for example, meeting Prince Malik allowed me to discover the country in a way that no organised tour or guidebook ever could.

In Africa too, encounters have often been at the heart of the adventure.

First came Senegal, where I married again.

My first wife was American. The woman I lost was from Martinique. My second wife is Senegalese.

When it comes to love, I’ve been international too.

More broadly, there is this continent — Africa — that fascinates me.

Cameroon, Congo, the tracks, the forests, the wildlife… and all those people you sometimes meet almost by chance.

Scientists, explorers, conservationists, but also priests I met in Congo or Angola, just after the wars.

Men who had devoted their lives to Africa.

Living libraries, capable of telling you about a country, its history, its people and its transformations better than any book ever could.

And then there are all those other characters nobody will ever write about, yet who would often deserve a chapter of their own.

Because journeys are not made only of landscapes.

Above all, they are made of people.

I’m not someone who fits very easily into a box.

Horseman, motorcyclist, diver, balloonist, traveller… You can keep adding labels, one after another, but none of them really tells the whole story.

In Portugal, I worked as a horseback trekking guide.

In Namibia, I worked as a safari guide for a month.

In Paris, I was responsible for the night flights of the Ballon de Paris for two seasons.

And for the past ten years, I have also been writing for magazines run by my friend Collin: first Road Trip Magazine, then Globe Ride Magazine, where I followed him.

Just like that… just to give it a try.

And then there are my contradictions. In everyday life, I can be perfectly disorganised. But when it comes to something I am passionate about, everything has to be exactly where it belongs.

I can spend months covering just 2,000 kilometres and, if the need arises, cover that same distance in a single day, in a kind of insane marathon.

Today, I want to tell those stories.

Not to pretend that my life has been extraordinary every moment of the way. That would be false.

But because, over the years, through travels and encounters, you eventually accumulate an incredible number of stories.

Some really are extraordinary.

Others are completely absurd.

And some seemed so insignificant at the time that you couldn’t possibly imagine they would become, years later, the memories you treasure most.

So this website will be all of that at once.

A logbook.

A place where I’ll talk about horses and classical riding, motorcycles, diving, hot-air ballooning, travel, Africa, Pakistan, unlikely encounters, anecdotes and all those little stories which, when put together, perhaps end up telling the story of a life.

And if you’re wondering why Jef the Saltimbanque…

It’s probably because a saltimbanque moves from one world to another without worrying too much about whether any of it fits into a logical career path.

He moves on.

He looks.

He learns.

He meets people.

And sometimes, he looks back and wonders how on earth he got there.

So, welcome.

You are now in the world of Jef the Saltimbanque.

And the story isn’t over yet.