Content creator and adventurer Ben Frier, better known as Backpacker Ben, shared the harrowing story of the time he got stopped by the Taliban.
The 31-year-old YouTuber says in his channel description that he travels ‘to places you probably shouldn’t’ in his videos, experiencing some outlandish events as he continues to make his way around the world.
Some of these include crashing a motorcycle on a dangerous road in Cambodia, getting robbed in Delhi and visiting rough neighbourhoods in Uganda.
The travel influencer has been just about everywhere (Instagram/backpacker.ben)
The Brit has more or less done it all in the name of adventure, having left his personal training job behind him for the thrill of country-hopping.
However, he revealed on a podcast that there was one trip where he was on the ropes, to the point where he could literally have soiled himself.
Ben was a guest on the Grapplers’ Perspective Podcast, hosted by health and fitness professionals Paul and Danny, and he told the story of how he was too prepared upon his visit to Afghanistan.
As a traveller, you want to be ready for anything and everything, but where’s the line when it becomes too much?
Frier told the hosts: “We landed in Kabul …and I was thinking ‘What have we done? There were Taliban everywhere.
“They were walking around with RPGs, guns you name it. Their flags were everywhere.”
But his first day went well, surprisingly, before all hell broke loose on day two.
The YouTuber’s prank almost went very wrong (Instagram/backpacker.ben)
The YouTuber went on: “We travelled through the mountains and this is where we got stopped by the Taliban – on a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere.”
It was here that the Afghan fighters went through their belongings, looking like they thought that Ben’s hair-dryer could have been a weapon, before finding something even worse – a condom.
Frier told them that it was ‘a joke’ that was put in his friend’s bag the day before adding: “They were going through his backpack, and they looked at (the condom) and start shouting ‘Haram, Haram!’ (forbidden).
“I thought ‘s***, I hope they don’t know what it was,’ but they knew what it was. We were all s******g ourselves.
“Eventually after about half an hour, it all calms down we drive off and go to the next town which is in a mountain region,” he revealed.
The Taliban were not happy with them after finding the condom (Instagram/backpacker.ben)
After this, things managed to get even scarier, as Friar, his friend and their local interpreter were taken into a US compound that the Taliban took over, as he described: “There were armed guards everywhere …they are all staring at us they’ve all got RPGs, massive beards, guns …and we get led up to this room.”
This was the point where Ben thought he would have to spend the next 10 years behind Afghan bars.
But by some sort of miracle and despite the language barrier, they convinced the Taliban commander that they weren’t reporters from the west.
The group managed to make friends with the commander, getting passes that let them cruise through checkpoints, unbothered, for the rest of their journey.