Yossi Ghinsberg

Yosseph "Yossi" Ghinsberg (יוסי גינסברג; born 5 April 1959) is an Israeli adventurer, author, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and motivational speaker, now based in Byron Bay, Australia.

Ghinsberg is most known for his survival story in an uncharted part of the Bolivian Amazon jungle for three weeks in 1981.

Ghinsberg's survival story was enacted in the 2017 psychological thriller Jungle, starring Daniel Radcliffe as Yossi Ghinsberg.

Ghinsberg's story was also featured in the documentary series I Shouldn't Be Alive on Discovery Channel.

Ghinsberg is now a tech-entrepreneur and the founder of the mobile applications Headbox, which integrates all social media activity into one feed, and Blinq, which provides social media and activity live updates.

After completing his service in the Israeli navy, Ghinsberg, inspired by the book Papillon by Henri Charrière, which detailed that author's experiences as an escaped convict, became determined to find Charrière and ask for his blessing to follow in his footsteps.

Ghinsberg had briefly returned from an Africa to Mexico trip and longed for the rainforest immersion experience.

He worked several jobs to save the money to travel to South America and dreamed of exploring the uninhabited heart of the Amazon jungle.

By the time Ghinsberg was finally able to travel to South America, Charrière had passed away, and the tribes Ghinsberg was interested in discovering had been "civilized".

Ghinsberg hitchhiked from Venezuela to Colombia, where he met Markus Stamm, a teacher from Switzerland, in the midst of his expeditions, and the pair became good friends and traveled together to La Paz, Bolivia.

There, Ghinsberg met Karl Ruprechter, a mysterious Austrian who claimed to be a geologist.

Ruprechter told Ghinsberg, that he was planning an expedition into the uncharted Amazon in Bolivia, in search of gold in a remote, indigenous Tacana village.

Ghinsberg, who sought out the opportunity to explore the unexplored areas of the Amazon, immediately joined Ruprechter in his journey, along with two of Ghinsberg's new acquaintances, Marcus Stamm, and Kevin Gale, an American photographer.

The four of them, never having had prior contact with each other, delved into a Bolivian adventure seeking gold.

22-year-old Ghinsberg and his two friends followed Ruprechter by plane to Apolo, La Paz, and from there traveled down to the Tuichi River and to a local village called Asariamas, at the confluence of rivers Tuichi–Asariamas.

There, they restocked food and supplies.

Then, according to Karl's stories about having visited an ancient indigenous village hidden deep within the rainforest – inhabited by "primitives" who had seen very few white men in their lifetime – the group began traveling up the Asariamas River, and across the mountains on their way there.

Eventually, low on supplies, they had to eat monkeys.

Stamm refused to eat monkeys and inevitably grew physically weaker.

Under these conditions, they decided to abandon their journey and return to Asariamas.

Back at Asariamas, Karl told them about his new plan: sailing on a raft down the Tuichi River to a small gold quarry called Curiplaya, on the river bed, and from there downriver to Rurrenabaque, near the Beni River, and then return to La Paz.

With the villagers' help, they built the raft, pursued their new route downriver, and arrived at the confluence of rivers Tuichi–Ipurama.

There, Ruprechter suddenly told them about San Pedro Canyon – a dangerous series of rapids, waterfalls, and boulders unsuitable for boating – and the fact that he could not swim, and thus refused to continue on the trip.

His deceit and betrayal led to distrust within the group and ended with the group's splitting up: Gale and Ghinsberg decided to continue rafting downriver to Rurrenabaque, while Ruprechter and Stamm decided to walk up the Ipurama River to Ipurama village, near the river's source, and return from there to Apolo.

The four men resolved to reconvene before Christmas, in La Paz.

As Ghinsberg and Gale's raft neared a waterfall, they lost control and became separated.

Gale made it to shore, but Ghinsberg floated downriver and over the waterfall.

He spent four days traveling upriver in search of Gale before finally coming to the realization that he was stranded alone in the jungle.

Gale was rescued by local fishermen after having been stranded for five days.

Back in the city of La Paz, he visited the Israeli and Austrian consulates to request their help preparing rescue missions for his friends.

Gale was informed by the authorities at the Austrian consulate that Ruprechter was actually an Austrian criminal wanted by Interpol.

Ghinsberg spent the next three weeks lost in an uncharted part of the Amazon.

He survived completely alone in nature on the edge of his life.

In the second week, there was a flood in the area, and Ghinsberg almost drowned.

He sank into a bog twice.

For the subsequent five days, Ghinsberg had no food but what he found, and his foot began to rot from fungi.

According to Ghinsberg, he had hallucinations of a woman with whom he slept each night.

Ghinsberg made his way back to the river and met Gale, along with indigenous people who had organized a search and rescue mission led by Abelardo "Tico" Tudela.

They found Ghinsberg three days into their search, three weeks after Ghinsberg was first declared missing.

Ghinsberg spent the three months following his rescue recovering in a hospital.