Off the western coast of Italy, in the country’s Maddalena archipelago, lives an enigmatic 79-year-old who lives on a beautiful island all alone.

For 29 years Mauro Morandi has called Budelli his own, ever since he departed mainland Italy in attempt to “quit modern society and start anew,” reports CNN.

Now, Morandi has opened up his corner of the world by showcasing its beauty on his Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Ironic how Morandi has since adopted the worst of modern society, hey?

However, his life remains almost unchanged:

Morandi says his unconventional life is the result of a lifelong nonconformist streak.

“I was always a rebellious child,” he tells CNN Travel. “I think I ran away from home, the first time, aged nine.”

At school he was impatient with teachers, at home he was frustrated with his parents. As an adult, he felt disenfranchised from society.

“I was a protester in ’68. Then I stopped engaging in politics because I realized I was not made for armed conflict, I hate weapons,” he says.

“You’re able to tell my mood…” Morandi reflects. “I started thinking about leaving a society that does not take the individual into account, but thinks only of power and money.”

Frustrated, Morandi made the decision to depart Italy, alongside a couple of friends.

“We took a catamaran to go to Polynesia to look for a desert island to start a new life,” he says.

Instead, the crew landed on the pink-coloured shores of Budelli, which lies between Corsica and Sardinia:

When Morandi arrived in the late 1980s, he realized he had the perfect deserted island right in front of him. And as luck would have it, Budelli’s caretaker was about to retire.

“And that’s how I took his place and found my Polynesia here,” he says.

Morandi became the island’s official guardian, monitoring the upkeep of Budelli and — at first — consciously avoiding summer daytrippers.

He inherited the tumbledown shack the former caretaker had lived in, and it’s been his home ever since.

“The first few years I was very standoffish,” recalls Morandi. “I did not want to communicate with anyone who came to see the pink beach, and I enjoyed all this beauty alone.”

As the years passed, Morandi mellowed.

“I felt a bit selfish and I wanted to share with the whole world what I consider one of the great beauties of nature,” he says. “Because I think like Dostoevsky that only beauty can save this world from man-made destruction.”

Morandi started to engage with the daytrippers who stopped off at Budelli on their boat tours of the seven Maddalena islands.

Now he gives tours and talks to guests in the summer months. He says he makes a particular effort to speak to children.

He cares about the environment — and stringently protects La Spiagga Rosa, which due to erosion from frequent tourism, has been cordoned off since the 1990s. Now visitors walk around the beach, leaving its famous sand untouched.

Thanks to the increased exposure that social media is bound to offer, Morandi has become as much of an attraction to visitors as the beaches:

“In the summer, the days are exclusively dedicated to communicating with tourists, who now come more than anything else to meet the ‘madman’ who lives alone on an island,” he says.

In the winter months, however, visitors remain infrequent. Morandi spends huge stretches of time alone. “I’ve never felt loneliness, because I’m fine by myself,” he insists.

And so is the life of a lone island dweller.

[source:cnn]