Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

Sometimes I am able to bring to you a guest who has just an extraordinary story to tell,

and I'm not sure that I'm actually talked to anybody who's got quite as remarkable a story as my guest today,

Avi Bahal, living in Boston, born in Agra, India, and recently returned from Mogadishu.

That's right. Mogadishu was a very interesting place to go. I had to have an armored car and three armed guards with me.

And you couldn't lower the windows. You had to go with the windows up and you can see.

And the security was very tight. But basically, if we went to a restaurant, you felt like a

VIP. I mean, these guards will go before, like the Secret Service goes and check before the president goes in.

It made me feel kind of important, but scared also at the same time. It was very interesting. The food was very good. The sites, the beaches

were fantastic. The people were nice, but they don't want you to go walk around by

yourself. They want always to have security with you because they don't want non-Muslims

to go there and influence the people.

But it was very interesting, very interesting.

And just for clarification, you're a Sikh, very obviously, and therefore they...

How did you feel you were treated given that clearly you're not of the Muslim faith?

Because of my dark skin and they knew that I was not an American or from Europe.

Basically, I didn't have problem.

My guy told me, as long as you're not blonde and a blue-eyed person, you should have no

problems. But however, they wouldn't still let me go out by myself. I always had to have security

with me. The hotel I stayed in was called Peace Hotel. And it was fortified. It was like a

gilded prison. There were security barbed wires all around,

40-gallon drums filled with concrete, four, five high, and about three-feet three times thick.

...