• 4 months ago
A British 'danger tourist' who travels to the world's most dangerous countries spent a month in Libya and was held for seven hours at gunpoint at an army checkpoint.

Daniel Pinto, 26, loves to visit countries deemed "dangerous" to explore areas tourists are never able to see and show what life is like in those places.

He has been to Iran, Iraq and Syria before.

Daniel headed to Libya on May 29, 2024, and spent 21 days travelling around the country - because it was a "mysterious" place he wanted to see.

He travelled by himself to Tripoli, Leptis Magna, Ghadames and the Nafusa Mountains - with a budget of $10 (£7.62) a day.

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Fun
Transcript
00:00Hello and welcome to country 134. I am here in Libya in the old city of Tripoli. I've been here
00:08for about 10 days so I want you guys to follow on my journey. I've been traveling independently
00:13which is new. They've recently launched an e-visa system and before this tourists couldn't just hang
00:19around and do whatever they want. I've been here for about 10 days. I've been exploring a lot of
00:23different cities, a lot of different parts of the country. It's been amazing. The people are great.
00:27So yeah, follow along because I've got so much to show you guys. But for now,
00:31welcome to Libya, Tripoli, country 134. Peace. All right guys, welcome to Gadames, Libya. So
00:39I'm in a place that has some interesting history that you've probably never heard of and neither
00:44have I. But this is what they call Tesco. Tesco is a Berber word for market and in this ancient city,
00:53this is where the market was. This is where vendors would come, sell their stuff, buy stuff
00:58and yeah, it was called Tesco in their original language. My local guide was telling me that
01:05the British who were here hundreds of years ago, they heard the word, they took it back with them
01:10and eventually someone started Tesco. Let me know in the comments if you knew the history of that
01:15word but the word Tesco, the supermarket actually comes from Berber and it is a local word for
01:21market. Very cool. Hopefully I taught you something new today. Welcome to Libya. And this
01:27is the old English concert like I told you that was here and from here they found the word Tesco
01:33and took it back to the UK. There's not much here anymore, you can see. But yeah, it's a really cool
01:40place in these old streets of Gadames. In this country, one litre of petrol is 0.15 which is
01:50equivalent to this much. It's very cheap to fill up a whole car. A car of this size costs about
01:57two dollars less. Yeah, less than two dollars. Two dollars. Yeah, less than two dollars. So as you can see,
02:03it's filling up. He's putting almost 50 litres and it's only just a dollar. Very cheap. Now, I'm going
02:11to go to the shop. I'm going to show you how much a bottle of water costs, a litre of water. Here's
02:15the shop. Same petrol station and they should have water inside. As-salamu alaykum. Let's have
02:23a look. Here we go. Here's the big litres of water. This should cost one dinar. So remember, a litre of
02:33petrol is 0.15. This will cost one dinar. One. Amazing. Thank you so much. You can see one dinar.
02:46This bottle of water which is just over a litre is six times more than a litre of petrol. Absolutely
02:51insane. So yeah, welcome to Libya where petrol is cheaper than water. Literally. Welcome to a day in
02:57the life of a full-time traveller who's currently backpacking around Libya. This morning I just got
03:01into Tripoli and I instantly went for a walk to go see what the city has to offer. It's actually
03:05super busy with a lot of life and it's not something you'd expect. Here's the gold market which is also
03:09pretty fascinating. Tripoli has a lot of gold shops. But before I bought anything I had to go
03:13get some cash. So I went to the old souk where there's a lot of money changing guys and I changed
03:1750 bucks. You think Libya would need a lot of security because of its past but in reality it
03:21really doesn't. In these markets you see guys walking around with hundreds of thousands of
03:25dollars like it's nothing. And now off to the clock tower cafe which is right in the centre of
03:28Tripoli to have a sandwich. I thought this is what I was getting but this is what I got in reality
03:33and it had way too much sauce. This slushy dough was fire. Been in Libya for about a week now so
03:38it's time to wash my clothes. You don't really see any laundry mats here so I had to do it myself.
03:42Luckily I always carry my scrubber bag which is essentially a portable washing machine with an
03:46inside washboard. You just fill up the bag with your clothes, fill it up with water to the line
03:49and just roll it along the floor. Leave it in a bag for a few minutes and then it's all pretty
03:53much clean. Just leave it out to dry. For dinner I decided to go to my favourite spot in the whole
03:56of Tripoli, the tuna market. It's tuna season now so you can get a kilo of tuna for about five bucks.
04:01It's probably the best food you can have here, it's unreal. Had a little walk around the old city,
04:05played some football with these kids and went home to rest and that's what a day looks like
04:08for a backpacker in Libya.

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