TOPIC – KEYNOTE
A 6 Week Homestay In Mogadishu – A Raw Perspective
Like many of us in the travel community, Lakshmi first visited Mogadishu on a brief tour with a guide, bullet-proof vehicle, and armed security by her side. But she felt unsatisfied. She wanted to explore independently. She wanted to see more.
So she returned—this time by land. She and a female friend traveled for days from Hargeisa all the way to the capital by local transport and wound-up spending over 2 months wandering around Mogadishu.
It was a unique adventure and she’s excited to be sharing all the nitty gritty details—from meeting nomads in the desert, passing through armed militia checkpoints and being welcomed by a wonderful little family in the old city and even accidentally starring in a Bollywood skit and becoming TikTok famous. The adventure ended with Somalia security detaining her for over two weeks and finally deporting her, just in time to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family in the US.
BIO
Lakshmi Parthasarathy
Lakshmi has been coding, droning and adventuring her way around the world since the pandemic and she makes videos about the unique places and people she encounters along her journey. She is a lover of off-the-beaten-path travel and the outdoors.
Some of her favorite memories over the last year include traveling solo in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, hitchhiking across Saudi Arabia and living in the jungle with the Penan tribe in Borneo while learning to hunt with blowpipes and poison darts.
Lakshmi grew up as a first-generation Indian-American in the Boston area. She would go on to study computer science at Harvard where she would unexpectedly catch the travel bug. One summer, she decided to board her very first plane to an unusual destination—a 14-hour flight to Accra, Ghana. It was her first time leaving America’s east coast and during that trip, she fell in love with exploring lesser known parts of the world.
After university, she would go on to begin a career in tech at Google in New York City but over the years, her desire to see the whole world led her to abandon her comfy corporate life and apartment in the Big Apple and become a digital nomad. And the rest is history!
Learn more about Lakshmi, listen to this podcast.
