The Climbing Travel Guide
Did you miss us on Indiegogo?
No worries! We got you cover!
The Climbing Travel Guide is finally and it can be purchased on Mapo Tapo Website.
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The Climbing Travel Guide is an illustrated guidebook of the most beautiful 50 climbing destinations around the world. With more than 150 pictures of outdoor photographers and more than 1000 climbing crags mentioned, it portrays areas that are off-the-beaten-track and where the development of climbing can make a difference for the local community.
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Why are we making this book?
Mapo Tapo is an outdoor travel brand. We design and organize trips for climbers and outdoor sports lovers worldwide. Our mission is to inspire the whole outdoor community out there to travel off-the-beaten-track and to get in touch with the local sport buddies.
We believe there is nothing more awesome than going somewhere you didn't know about, get in touch with the local sports community (photographers; B&B hosts; local climbers), and discover the place through your favorite sport.
The world has to know about these places. Get ready to be inspired.
The Climbing Travel Guide is the first book to comprehensively document and celebrate the 50 best off-the-beaten-track climbing destinations in the world and their local communities.
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Wadi Rum, Jordan - photo by Nelson Klein - Sample Cover of THE CLIMBING TRAVEL GUIDE
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Koh Tao, Thailand - photo by Kelsey Gray - Sample destination layout from THE CLIMBING TRAVEL GUIDE
Climbing is getting more and more popular, and some “popular” areas already started to suffer from overcrowding. But there are thousands of areas equally beautiful that simply didn’t get the same visibility. And visiting such areas can really make a difference for the local communities. Once this pandemic will be over, let’s try this: we spread out, we explore, we discover, we meet up with the locals.
This book is the first step to make this new way of traveling a reality. As a united outdoor community, we can be pioneers of a new way of traveling: away from the crowds, immersed in nature, and practicing our favorite sport.
What’s special about this guide?
This book wants to inspire outdoor lovers from all over the world to go to the off-the-beaten-track places, discover the stories of the local hosts, support the development of the area and leave an impact on the local community.
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Makatea, French Polynesia - photo by Jimmy Martinello - Sample destination layout from THE CLIMBING TRAVEL GUIDE
Il will be done involving 50 of the finest outdoor photographers worldwide and interviewing the key exponents of the local sports community for each location.
In this storybook you will find:
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From the US to Thailand, from South Africa to Italy, a selection of the best climbing spots will be mentioned within each destination.
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Sicily, Italy - photo by Massimo Cappuccio - Sample destination layout from THE CLIMBING TRAVEL GUIDE
We are working with outdoor photographers from all over the world to collect the most amazing shots to portray each destination. We are interviewing local well-traveled climbers in each destination to give an accurate overview of the best climbing spots, with particular attention to off-the-beaten-track areas. The designer and illustrator in our team, Greta and Francesco, have both strong experience in the outdoor industry and will enrich this valuable content with a sleek design and hand-drawn illustrated maps.
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Sicily, Italy - photo on the left by Adam Vas; photo on the right by Ilaria Occhipinti; illustration by Francesco Bonvecchio - Sample destination layout from THE CLIMBING TRAVEL GUIDE
The production of this 200 pages gem will be possible only with your help. Pre-order now a book on this Indiegogo page, we will be shipping the finished books anywhere in the world by June 2021.
Not only will you help to create the best coffee-table book for outdoor lovers, but you will also support an awesome NGO.
All profits will be donated to Maewan, an outdoor sports ecotourism NGO
We will use the first 10K euro funds collected through this campaign to cover the production costs and to print the guidebooks ordered by all our backers. From that moment on, all the profits will be donated to Maewan, an NGO that develops ecotourism based on outdoor sports in remote areas around the world.
The rewards
1. The Sticker Pack
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5 Mapo Tapo stickers. Just the right reward in case you love and you want to contribute to our mission, but you are not interested in a guidebook. Mapo Tapo’s sleek design guaranteed.
2. The Book
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The awesome guide we will build together. The Climbing Travel Guide is an amazing storybook, 26x21cm, portraying the 50 most astonishing off-the-beaten track climbing destinations in the world. It is packed with pictures from outdoor photographers and illustrations.
3. The Book + The Sticker Pack
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Amazing guidebook and awesome stickers: best deal ever.
4. The Book, The Stickers and The Chalkbag
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Not just the amazing guidebook and awesome stickers, but a super nice Mapo Tapo chalkbag (handmade with love by Scaua Climbing) that will accompany you in your next climbing adventure. Recycled materials, the inside is sooo soft and the cork detail just makes it awesome.
5. 2 Books + The Sticker Pack
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One book for you and the other one for the special friend who is tied to the other side of your rope. And of course stickers like raining.
6. ALL IN: The Book + All Gadgets
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Book, stickers, chalkbag and Mapo Tapo “I climb off the beaten track” rad t-shirt. Just the right reward if you want to get ready to go climbing out there as soon as it will be safe to. Top tanks available for girls.
7. ALL IN for Heroes: The Book, Gadgets & Special Mention
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Well, what can we say? If you decide to go for this reward, you will make our day. You will not just receive the gadget pack (book, t-shirt, stickers and chalkbag), but you will also be officially mentioned among The Climbing Travel Guide contributors (with pic and small bio), who made this piece of art a reality.
8. The Book + A Climbing Trip to Sicily
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Prepare your backpack and get ready to climb off-the-beaten track in Sicily, Italy as soon as it will be safe to travel again. Amazing rock, incredible food, golden tufas and a kick-ass climbing local community. Through this perk you will get a voucher to use on mapotapo.com website to join the "Sicilian Vibe" climbing trip. Feel free to drop us an email at hello@mapotapo.com if you want to know more about this perk (all the logistics and what’s included/ excluded in the price). All the trips are organized by our travel partner Globe Inside. This specific trip is for autonomous climbers only and flights are excluded.
Wholesale orders
Do you need to do a bulk order of minimum 10 copies of the guidebook? Hit us up at hello@mapotapo.com! Bulk orders help us to increase our economies of scale and allow us to increase our impact donating more to Maewan, the NGO we are partnering with.
About the creators and Mapo Tapo
Hi! I am Daniele Calvo Pollino, Co-creator of the climbing travel guide and co-founder at Mapo Tapo, nice to meet you!
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This pic was taken in early 2020 in Fontainebleau, right at before the beginning of COVID19 pandemic. Me and Alessia Fontanari (the other co-founder) were working days and nights in our living room to try to build an outdoor sport travel company in the middle of the pandemic.
At that time, I had recently quit my job in a multinational company as product manager, while Alessia was a consultant.
Most importantly, me and Ale have been rock climbing around the world for the past 10 years and we had this big dream of creating a company to develop a new way of traveling: away from crowds, immersed in nature, and doing our favorite sport.
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While we were in lockdown, we met other 2 fantastic members of the team (Andrea Palazzi and Andrea Guffanti), and together, we managed to create a passionate community around our mission. Also, we put in place a strong partner network to work with and all the tech infrastructure.
As soon as the pandemic gave us a break, we managed to make a lot of climbers traveling, bringing them to local climbing communities around the world, financing several new routes where we travelled.
Now we are temporarily stuck in lockdown again but our passion and mission is stronger than ever.
No matter if we cannot bring climbers and outdoor lovers around the world to awesome climbing destinations and communities… with this book we will bring local climbing communities around the world to you.
Why do we need 10K euro?
The Climbing Travel Guide is indeed a collaborative effort. Pictures and stories will be sourced from 50 different photographers all around the globe. Also, the design of the guidebook and all the illustrations will be managed by some of the most prominent business professionals within the outdoor world.
We want to make sure that all the people involved in the project will be paid fairly.
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Budget split
Are you an outdoor sports photographer?
If you are an outdoor photographer who lived in a climbing destination that took your breath away and where the development of climbing could make a difference for local communities, do reach out at hello@mapotapo.com! We would be very happy to talk!
The guidebook timeline
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Risks and challenges
Creating a top-notch and well-designed storybook in a historical period where businesses are still dealing with the consequences of the pandemic has certain associated risks.
To minimize the risks, we already connected and closed contracts with a great number of professionals that will be involved in the book production (among which the main designer and the main illustrator of the book and numerous photographers and copy editors of the different locations).
As a team, we internally own all the skills and knowledge to make this project happen and we partner with an important logistics provider in Italy to manage all the distribution processes worldwide.
There might be some delay in shipping given the current pandemic, but we will do everything possible in our hands to limit and mitigate all the problems that may occur.
