1. To join a trekking you must free yourself of your daily anxieties and leave them at home. Walking helps you to release the stress of your mind, and you will find that solutions of your problems come easily. And this activity helps you to free your mind of the negative energy accumulated during months of work.
2. Learn how to live in a group. Accept the group’s dynamics; the members can be different and not feel a connection between themselves, but now you are part of this group, and each day you learn to become a team with them. Group members will reach a plateau of freely sharing their knowledge and possessions with each other.
3. Share with the group of what you feel your sensations and doubts. To keep them to yourself can’t help the group to understand what you might need. Inform the guide if you have problems; (s)he will do everything possible to help you.
4. Learn to accept the unforeseen. Nothing is irremediable, and the unforeseen is the ordinary each day during a trek. Losing a path, arriving at twilight, not finding food where we expect it, can be unpredictable, but often the most instructive.
5. Trekking needs flexibility. A flexible way of thinking will help you appreciate experiences that you might never imagined before (to sleep in the open air, under the full moon for example, is something that you never thought you might never do and instead... here you are !).
6. Pay attention to encounter. Encounter with people who live in the places where we are walking. Because encounter is the real value of walking, encounter with nature outside and inside us, encounter with people who live in a simple way, who have so much to teach us, encounter with shepherds, with special people who have had courage to choose an unusual life.
7. Don’t run ! Discover the inner peace that walking slowly and being aware of your surroundings can provide. As you amble, look around you; there is always a new flower, an insect, a color that can amaze you. Trekking is not a competition; on the contrary, the group has to adapt its rhythm to the slowest walker.
8. Discover the silence ! It’s nice to travel in a group, to meet new people, to exchange experiences and to increase each other’s knowledge. But walking is also to discover the beauty of silence, to listen to your own step, your own breath, the enchanting sounds of nature ... your fellow travellers will be grateful to you !
9. Walking tours help to distinguish the necessary from the superfluous. So, we discover what it is necessary to eat, and on the contrary what is a habit; we discover what is necessary in maintaining daily hygiene, in comforts, etc. If we leave the superfluous from our backpacks and from our minds, everything will be lighter.
10. Do not burden the guide with too many expectations. The guide is at your disposition to solve problems, but you mustn’t give him your problems, if your choice was not thought out beforehand. Ask yourself why you participated on this trek, what were your expectations, and determine what are the real problems…

(written by Luca Gianotti)