Yossi Ghinsberg

Yossi Ghinsberg
Born (1959-04-25) 25 April 1959
Israel
Residence Byron Bay[1]
Alma mater Tel Aviv University
Children 4
Website ghinsberg.com

Yossi Ghinsberg is an Israeli adventurer, author and speaker based in Australia.[1] He is most known for being lost and surviving alone in an uncharted part of the Bolivian Amazon for three weeks in 1981.[2][3]

Ghinsberg’s survival story was featured in the documentary series I Shouldn't Be Alive on Discovery Channel.[4] He wrote his first book, titled Back from Tuichi, in 1993.[5] The book became very popular in Israel and has been translated into 15 languages and published in several countries under different names, including Heart of the Amazon (Macmillen) Back from Tuichi (Random House),[6] and Lost in the Jungle (Summersdale). In 2008, he wrote his second book, titled Laws of the Jungle: Jaguars Don't Need Self-Help Books.

Early life

Ghisberg was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel.[7] His parents were Holocaust survivors. When he was 18, he joined the Israeli navy as part of mandatory military service.[8]

Amazon Travel

After completing his service in Israeli navy, inspired by Papillon, Ghinsberg decided to travel. He worked several jobs to save money to make it to South America.[6] When he was in LaPaz, he met Karl Rurechter, an Austrian who claimed to be a geologist. Karl told Ghinsberg that he was planning an expedition into the uncharted Amazon of Bolivia in search for gold in a very remote indigenous village. Ghinsberg and two of his friends - Kevin, an American photographer and Marcus Stamm, a Swiss Ghinsberg met in South America - decided to join Karl.[9]

Ghinsberg and the three men flew by plane and then walked for four days to arrive at the uncharted area. There, they had to eat monkeys due to being low on supplies. However, Marcus refused to eat monkeys and grew weaker.[10] After traveling through the rainforest for a month, they decided to build a raft to evacuate on river. However, Karl could not swim and did not want to use a raft. By that time they had realized that Karl was lying about the gold and the indigenous village. The group had disagreements, which led to them breaking up.[8] Kevin and Ghinsberg decided to take the raft down the river and Karl and Marcus decided to walk upriver.[6] Karl and Marcus were never heard from again. Ghinsberg and Kevin lost control of the raft as it neared a waterfall. Kevin made it to shore but Ghinsberg floated downstream and over the waterfall. He spent four days travelling upriver in order to find Kevin. But then he started walking downriver believing it to be the adventure he wanted. Ghinsberg spent the next three weeks without supplies and equipment in an uncharted part of Amazon. On the fourteenth day, there was a flood in the area and for the subsequent five days, he did not have anything to eat.[10] He would find berries, snails and raw eggs to eat.[11] According to him, he hallucinated a woman with whom he slept each night while he was lost and did everything for her.[12]

Kevin was found by a tribe and he along with two indigenous people found Ghinsberg after three days of search rescue mission, three weeks after Ghinsberg was lost.[7] Following his rescue, Ghinsberg spent the next three months in a hospital.[11]

Movie adaptation

In 2014, Arclight film studio announced that they would be adapting Ghinsberg's novel Jungle: A Harrowing True Story of Survival into a movie of the same name. The movie will follow the three weeks that Ghinsberg spent in the Amazon.[13] Daniel Radcliffe will star as Yossi [14] and Kevin Bacon has been cast as Karl, the Austrian guide in the movie, which will be directed by Greg McLean.[15]

Career

Ghinsberg served three years in the Israeli Navy on the Red Sea. During these years he befriended the Bedouin of the Sinai desert and learned more about their nomad culture.[1][16] In order to collect money to travel, Ghinsberg worked multiple jobs including construction work in Norway, fishing in Alaska, and loading and unloading trucks in New York.[17]

Ten years after his Amazon survival, he went back to the place where he was lost. Ghinsberg put the Tacana-Quechua people of the village of San José de Uchupiamonas in touch with the Inter-American Development Bank, which gave a $1.25 million grant to build a solar-powered ecolodge in the jungle, and to train the local people how to manage it. He stayed there for three years with the natives and helped them in building an ecolodge, which is now called Chalalan. He also put the people of San Jose in touch with Conservation International, a Washington environmental group that has pioneered much of the ecotourism field and that was instrumental in getting 4.5 million acres around San Jose declared as the Madidi National Park. Ghinsberg also work on protecting intellectual properties of indigenous people of that region.[6]

Ghinsberg was recruited in 1995 by CITA International as VP for Development; under this role he has founded 12 centers for the treatment of opiate addiction in different parts of the world. In 1999 quitting CITA International Ghinsberg moved to Australia to open his own treatment center.[18] In 2001, at the height of the intifada, he organized a music festival in Israel to promote Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.[19]

He started his career as a motivational speaker in 2001. He was a speaker at TEDxBratislava.[19] In 2009 Ghinsberg returned to Israel and established Collecteco, a gallery of furniture made from recycled materials. He co-founded a company called Headbox in 2013.

In 2015, Ghinsberg launched the mobile application Blinq. The application adds a layer of contextual information to mobile messaging applications. Once installed, Blinq appears as a small white dot that pops up inside mobile messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and SMS, alerting the user to new information about the person they are communicating with. This additional information is pulled from a variety of other networks, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.[20]

Personal life and education

After returning from Amazon, Ghinsberg graduated from Tel Aviv University in Israel with Philosophy and Business degrees.[9] He has married three times and has four kids. He returned to Israel with his wife and children in 2009.[21]

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 3 Browne, Rachel (April 8, 2007). "The Unending Mystery". The Sydney Morning Herald.
  2. ↑ Fontaine, Tom. "Extraordinary tales of human survival". MSN. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
  3. ↑ Cleland, Marie (26 February 2009). "8 incredible survival stories". Matador Network. Retrieved 7 December 2013.
  4. ↑ "Escape from the Amazon". Discovery. Retrieved 8 December 2013.
  5. ↑ Kirsch, Jonathan (January 26, 1994). "BOOK REVIEW: NONFICTION : A Powerful Story of Self-Discovery, Survival in the Wild : BACK FROM TUICHI: The Harrowing Life-and-Death Story of Survival in the Amazon Rainforest, by Yossi Ghinsberg ; Random House, $22, 239 pages". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Hendrix, Steve (8 September 1998). "Lost and Found". Washington Post. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
  7. 1 2 "CNN Larry King Live". CNN. Retrieved 8 December 2013.
  8. 1 2 Round, Simon (17 July 2008). "I Was Lost in The Amazon Jungle". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved 8 December 2013.
  9. 1 2 "What You Can Learn About Finding Success From The Man Who Was Lost In the Jungle – With Yossi Ghinsberg". Mixergy. 22 October 2009. Retrieved 7 December 2013.
  10. 1 2 "Lost and Alone in the Jungle, My Feet Began to Rot". FHM. October 2008. pp. 79, 80.
  11. 1 2 "I'm not a celebrity, get me out of here!". Totally Jewish. Archived from the original on April 7, 2014. Retrieved 5 April 2014.
  12. ↑ "The 12 Rules of Survival". Security Whip. Retrieved 9 April 2014.
  13. ↑ "Kevin Bacon to take on true survival drama 'Jungle'". Mother Nature Network. Retrieved 15 February 2015.
  14. ↑ "Daniel Radcliffe to Star in Thriller 'Jungle'". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 4, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Kevin Bacon cast in Amazon thriller Jungle". The Independent. Retrieved 15 February 2015.
  16. ↑ "Adventurer Yossi Ghinsberg". ABC Australia. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
  17. ↑ Das, Mohua (8 December 2013). "Two Lives Less Ordinary - Survival Spirit of a True Bedouin". Calcutta, India: Telegraph India.
  18. ↑ "The dollars of detox". Ben Hills. Archived from the original on December 24, 2013. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
  19. 1 2 "TEDxBratislava - Yossi Ghinsberg - On thinking out of the box". TED. Retrieved 9 December 2013.
  20. ↑ "Blinq Enhances Your Favorite Messaging Applications With Extra Information". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 15 February 2015.
  21. ↑ ""אני הולך רק למקומות מפחידים": יוסי גינסברג לא נח לרגע". NRG. Retrieved 27 March 2014.
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