VENICE, Italy, Aug. 4 Three Italians have begun a motorbike journey across Asia to Japan carrying 1,000 paper cranes from children in Italy.
During a 12,000-mile journey, the three plan to stop off at a treatment center in Ukraine for children injured by radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the Italian news agency ANSA reports.
The men left St. Mark's Square in Venice on Friday and expect to arrive in Hiroshima, Japan, in about six weeks.
Dr. Carlo Mascarin, 46, said he has been training for the hardships he expects for a year.
"It's the Asian stretch, the part from Siberia to Mongolia, that thrills me the most," he said. "The roads are dirt tracks and, from what we gather, in certain parts of Siberia there are no roads at all."
Mascarin and his companions plan to hang the cranes on a statue of Sadako, a Japanese girl who died in 1955 of leukemia linked to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Sadako began folding paper cranes after she learned she was sick but died before reaching her goal of 1,000.
Copyright 2007 by UPI
