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A notorious British ‘danger tourist’ has launched his latest stunt – claiming to be stranded in Pakistan after going to ‘rescue’ a tour guide who helped him out on one of his previous ‘adventures’.
Miles Routledge, a former student from Birmingham who has previously visited Chernobyl, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Ukraine as war broke out, is currently in Peshawar around 20 miles from the Afghan border.
He claims to have invested £15,000 in a trip to the Taliban-controlled country to rescue a tour guide and his family – but has accused the guide of pulling out at the last minute, leaving him stuck.
Miles has now been reduced to appealing for money to continue the trip online – which he says will be used for charity work in Kabul instead – while posting self-serving status updates about how his life has been ‘ruined’.
In one such update posted yesterday, he wrote: ‘[This] means I can’t go on a date with a girl I really liked, it means I can’t sponsor a joint adventure with my friend, I will go home to an empty room. I am at my end.’
Miles Routledge, from Birmingham, is stranded in Pakistan after a trip to ‘save the lives’ of an Afghan tour guide and his family fell apart
Miles first grabbed headlines last year amid the Taliban take-over of Afghanistan when he turned up in Kabul having got ‘trapped’ while on ‘holiday’ in the country.
Branded an ‘idiot’, he was eventually evacuated to safety in Dubai – documenting the experience on notorious troll message board 4chan – but went on to undertake several more dangerous trips to South Sudan, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.
He has been posting cryptic messages about his latest trip since at least mid-February, asking followers for donations so he can ‘save 15 people’s lives.’
While he has kept details of the trip sparse – claiming he will be arrested otherwise – he had boasted that it would involve travelling through areas where kidnappings and suicide bombings are common, and cycling through ISIS territory.
Miles appears to have departed on April 21 – describing himself as ‘the only white person on the plane’ – before ‘walking 25km in a single day’ towards his destination.
On April 22 he posted:’ I just want to say thankyou for the donations, I’ll reveal the purpose of the trip in the 3rd country I enter because then it’ll be safe.
‘It’s directly saving lives and will be next level stuff. I understand any doubts, so please wait for the results and proof!’
Three days later he seems to have arrived in Pakistan where the plan dramatically fell apart when the ‘tour guide’ he claimed to be helping pulled out.
‘So bloody p****d, the person I’ve planned to save for seven months lied to me saying the border is closed for British people,’ he wrote in a since-deleted tweet.
Miles first grabbed headlines during the Taliban take-over of Afghanistan last year when he went on ‘holiday’ to the country and had to be evacuated from Kabul
He then travelled to South Sudan – a war-torn country in central Africa – over Christmas last year where he claimed to have taken supplies to rural communities
‘When I called the embassy and found out the opposite, they’re backing out because they think the journey is too dangerous and are getting cold feet. For f***s sake.’
He added: ‘For reference, I invested over 400 hours and £15,000ish on saving my tour guide, now that he’s backed out at the last possible minute he’s ruined me.’
Formulating a plan on the hoof, Miles appealed to anyone wanting to take on a foreign correspondent for minimal pay who is willing to go to dangerous places.
But he seems to have settled on the idea of going to Kabul to ‘be goofy and do some charity work along the way’. The city ‘has good internet so I can Livestream’, he adds.
In his most-recent update, posted on Wednesday morning, he claimed to be boarding a rickshaw to the Afghan border. ‘I hope they let me in,’ he wrote.
Miles has previously bragged of visiting Chernobyl, posting pictures in May last year saying it was two years since he visited the scene of the 1986 nuclear disaster.
In August the same year he appeared in Kabul, saying he chose to go on holiday to Afghanistan during fighting between the government and Taliban ‘because it was dangerous’ before getting stranded.
He claimed he was quizzed by armed Taliban militants while on his way to Kabul International Airport.
They apparently asked him where he was from – to which he said Wales. He claims the fighters did not know where Wales was, and let him go.
Miles said he also handed out cash to people on the street while in South Sudan (pictured)
The former physics student also went to Ukraine on February 25 this year, just a day after Vladimir Putin declared war on the country
Miles said he later came across another armed convoy during the Taliban insurgency and took a selfie on one of their gun emplacements.
The former Loughborough physics student then travelled to South Sudan over Christmas, claiming he took ‘supplies’ to rural communities and handed out cash to people in the streets.
The African country has been ravaged by civil war and violence since becoming independent in 2011.
He also claims to have been in Kazakhstan during the riots in January this year, during which hundreds of people are thought to have been killed in a crackdown on protesters by security forces.
Then, as Russia massed its forces on the border with Ukraine, Miles took another ‘holiday’ to the eastern European nation – arriving a day after the war started.
Dismissing his critics to MailOnline earlier this year, he said: ‘I’d say I wish them all the best but truthfully they were never my audience.
‘For every seething comment made against me, behind it was my friends and I eating popcorn and laughing at them.
‘I’ll continue to travel regardless of their opinions, I’ll even go back to Afghanistan and there’s nothing they can do about it.’
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