Literatureיוסי גינסברג

Yossi Ghinsberg

Yossi Ghinsberg is an Israeli adventurer, author and motivational speaker known for surviving alone for three weeks in the Bolivian Amazon in 1981.

born 1959Surviving in the Bolivian AmazonThe book Back from TuichiThe 2017 film JungleThe Chalalan ecolodge

Born: 25 April 1959, Tel Aviv
Occupation: writer, traveler, motivational speaker, patron of the arts
Education: Tel Aviv University

Yossi Ghinsberg was born in 1959 in Tel Aviv

Ghinsberg was born in 1959 to parents who survived the Holocaust. At age 5 he moved with his family to Ramat Gan.

He served three years in the Israeli Navy on the Red Sea, where he came to know the Bedouin of Sinai. He then worked jobs abroad to fund a journey to South America.

In Bolivia he joined an expedition into the uncharted jungle led by Karl Ruprechter, an Austrian who claimed to be a geologist. After a rafting accident on the Tuichi River, Ghinsberg was lost alone for three weeks until a search party found him. His companions Ruprechter and Stamm were never found.

He wrote Back from Tuichi, a bestseller in Israel translated into 15 languages, and earned a bachelor's degree at Tel Aviv University. He later helped build the Chalalan ecolodge in Bolivia and worked for CITA International, founding addiction treatment centers worldwide.

In 2008 he published Laws of the Jungle and returned to Israel, where he founded Collecteco. In 2015 he co-founded the startup Blinq.me, and in 2017 his story became the film Jungle starring Daniel Radcliffe.