Mad backpacker

“I want to go to the places where I don’t meet all those tourist people who do their normal stuff,” he says.Is this your idea of a good time? Do you hate the tourist queues? A German named Billy Six (yes) backpacks from one seething cauldron of civil war to another. Maybe his secret is his dress - literally.

Despite his dirty blond hair, beard and blue eyes, Billy tries to blend in. He dresses in the traditional Muslim garb of rural North Africa, the long dress-like jalabiya, and a white skull cap.

He is currently walking and hitchhiking across Africa. He says he lives cheaply, takes the occasional odd job, but mostly relies on the kindness of strangers.

And after running into Billy twice an NPR reporter speaks frankly:

I began to think that Billy Six was either adventurous to the point of recklessness, or a brilliant German intelligence asset, or maybe just mad as a German hatter.

Read more or listen here.

I believe this is his website (in German).

(Brad)

Comments

[Dan]

I am reminded of Robert Frost's quote---" The woods are lovely dark
and deep.But I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep."

[Andrew]

In the latter 19th and early 20th Century before the First World War there was a series of German and British adventurers who published romanticised tales of their daring adventures infiltrating the Bedouin world. Lawrence of Arabia was such a popular hero in part because the civilian public was already familiar with the dashing Westerner going undercover and passing as an Arab, wearing the robes, speaking the language (no mean feat), becoming accepted and even making the pilgrimage to Mecca and emerging to tell the tale.

I like the idea that he's an adrenaline junkie, or a German intel asset, or both. Plenty of precedent.