About Zvone Šeruga

POPOTNIK (Traveller, 384 pages, 420 photos)), ninth book by Zvone Šeruga was releised in December 2012, telling stories about Zvone's recent travels in West Papua (Indonesia), Namibia and motorcycling through several countries of central and south-east Africa. It's being translated into english and will be (hopefully) available on Amazon by summer 2013. 75 hours on HD video were recorded on those tours and Zvone is still trying to ignite some fresh interes on different TVs for serial of travel documentaries.

ZVONE'S CONTACT:

GSM: +386 41 323479, zvoneseruga@siol.net; www.facebook/serugazvone

Filming in mountains of West Papua, 2009Zvone Šeruga (born in 1956 in Slovenia, Europe) is, and has been for the past couple of decades, quite possibly Slovenia's most renowned traveller, often coupling his adventurous streak with his love of journalism, photography and film. While his later endeavors were in no way foreshadowed in his childhood of rural bliss in socialistic Yugoslavia, where passports were unheard of and foreign lands the stuff of legends, he quickly discovered a whole new world of possibilities upon arriving in Ljubljana in 1974, with the intent of studying journalism.

After obtaining his first passport and testing it on a shopping trip to neighboring Italy’s Trieste - after all, what is a young journalist-cum-adventurer without his own pair of Levi's? - he decided something slightly more exotic was in order and left to explore Europe, northern Africa and India. Hitch-hiking and local transport were the cheapest and best option to discover the unique diversity of those parts of the world. Later - when it became clear that his severe case of wanderlust would never let him study his way to a degree - he started exploring the world on longer journeys, traveling through both Americas by any means possible and discovering eastern Asia as a sailor.

See Zvone's video insert with 22.000.000 views on Youtube - Surma tribe in Ethiopia, from TV serial MY AFRICA (with Neja)

During that time he became a prolific writer and photographer, with articles published throughout Yugoslavia, which in the eighties enabled him to get financial backing for his best known project - a motorbiking round-the-world trip, spanning 4 years, 5 continents and 156.000 kilometers.

Through Uganda, 2011. Four months of fresh african experienceOn this journey he was for the first time joined by Romana, a fellow student of journalism and the love of his life, and the last year of the trip, crossing Africa, was also their honeymoon.
In the following 6 years they had two children: daughter Kaja and son Grega. This of course didn't stop Zvone, whose life as a traveller and freelance journalist has meanwhile become something almost resembling a full-time job. More importantly, he and Romana introduced their children to the beauty and mind-boggling diversity of this world on two year-long journeys. As a family they still backpacked the path less trodden, visiting remote villages where life is untouched by civilization and a young family of a bizzarely white complexion is always welcomed with a wide smile. It is exactly these primary and tribal people who remain the main focus of all his work.

In 2000 Zvone started the Seruga travel club, which enables people with less time and traveling experience discover some of the most interesting parts of Africa and Asia. These expeditions are geared towards travelers and adventurers, and will take them through the tribal parts of Ethiopia, Kenya and Namibia in Africa while in Asia they can discover India, Indonesia, Nepal and the Philippines. Zvone is not interested in running a big business so he is keeping things small and enjoyable, with a maximum of five trips a year.

Thar desert in Rajastan, India. Remote places are business and pleasure.

World motorcycle tour 1983 - 88, with RomanaDuring his 35 years of travel Zvone wrote nine books and published thousands of articles while his travelogues kept the cinema halls of Slovenia full for years.
His passion, however, remains camera-work. He has already done a couple of documentary television series and feature-films based on his travels and is now with Neja, a family friend and journalist, making a a new series in which their path takes them through the remotest tribal parts of West Papua (filmed in the summer of 2009) and Namibia (june 2010).

Coming home, to Romana and family, is still the best part of each trip.Zvone is a self-proclaimed productive hedonist, which is also one of the reasons his works have never been translated or published abroad - he simply sees no sense in wasting time in meetings with editors and publishers, when tramping through leech-infested jungles in search of remote tribes can be so much more fun.

He and Romana have been living and traveling together for almost three decades, and Zvone still claims the best part of each trip is returning home to his family in Slovenia, and that his work, the traveling and the returning, make him one of the most unashamedly happy people he knows.