Nairobi — In 2007, besieged Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi travelled to Paris, France, in an entourage of five planes. He brought along a camel, his 40 female bodyguards -- who are all said to be virgins -- and, of course, his beloved tent, which he carries wherever he goes. Gaddafi - whose name can be spelt in over 100 different ways - carts the tent around to stay true to his Bedouin roots, he says. The Bedouin people live in the desert and, as they travel across it, they set up large tents commonly made of hand-woven goat hair. The Libyan leader says he entertains guests in his tent "as it offers him a non-verbal way of communicating that he is a man close to his cultural roots". Simple tent A delegation of Kenyan men, including Goldenberg architect Kamlesh Pattni and former Mungiki leader Maina Njenga, recently found out just how seriously the eccentric leader takes his cultural commitment to the tent. Gaddafi believed he was meeting with Kenyan elders, yet he still hosted them under his simple tent and out in the desert. Even Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, who had called on Gaddafi recently in Tripoli as part of his shuttle diplomacy against the ICC process, was ushered into the tent and welcomed to sit on plastic garden chairs, the kind available in Kenyan supermarkets for Sh500. Welcome to the weird world of Muammar Gaddafi. He was not dubbed the "mad dog of the Middle East" by former President Ronald Reagan for nothing. And, according to leaked US diplomatic cables, the Libyan leader is a "notoriously mercurial" figure who suffers from severe phobias and leads an astonishingly quirky lifestyle. He is also rumoured to have undergone plastic surgery on his face, leading to his unusual look that makes it hard to tell whether he is sad or happy. The man, who at 27 successfully organised a coup to overthrow Libyan King Idris I in 1969, has a reputation of walking the unbeaten path when it comes to his lifestyle and leadership, and has always had the rest of the world watching him warily. According to TIME magazine, Gaddafi technically holds no formal office and is officially known only by the title "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution", though he is still considered the de facto leader of the nation. In 1977, he invented a system of government unique to Libya called the "Jamahiriya", or state of the masses, in which the nation is supposedly governed by the populace through local councils. The Jamahiriya, however, has been dismissed by several international observers, including the CIA, as a military dictatorship. Soon after taking power, Gaddafi wrote a manifesto, The Green Book, said to be his own version of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, which denounced capitalism and communism as slavery, rejected political parties as forms of dictatorship and advocated direct rule by People's Committees according to Islamic law. The list of his unconventional habits reads like fiction, starting with his "Amazonian Guard" entourage - an elite group of 40 female bodyguards. The candidates for the Amazonian Guard are handpicked by Gaddafi and undergo intensive firearms and martial arts training at a special academy. The guards are allowed privileges such as dressing in Western-style fatigues, wearing makeup and sporting Western hairstyles and high heels. When it comes to his health, Gaddafi prefers female physicians and always calls upon his long-time Ukrainian nurse Galyna Kolotnytska who, according to a US document released by WikiLeaks last year, is a "voluptuous blonde". Rumours have persisted the two have a romantic relationship but his children have denied this. It is said the Libyan leader cannot travel without Kolotnytska as she alone "knows his routine". On his last trip to the US, Kolotnytska's visa application was delayed but that was not going to stop her travelling with Gaddafi. The Libyan Government sent a private jet to ferry her from Libya to Portugal to meet with the Leader during his rest-stop. Gaddafi fears flying over water and hates flying for more than eight hours. It is also said that he cannot climb more than 35 steps at a go. The Libyan leader also enjoys flamenco dancing and horse-racing, acts on his whim, and irritates friends and enemies alike, according to WikiLeaks. After overthrowing King Idris I, Libya's first and only king, Gaddafi launched a "cultural revolution" and removed any link of former colonial and foreign influence, ranging from street signs and village names to the economic and political structure of the country. Gene Cretz, the former US envoy to Libya, found Gaddafi "almost obsessively dependent on a small core of trusted personnel", including a senior aide who speaks to him on a special red phone, reported the Guardian. He also cited "Gaddafi's well-known predilection for changing his mind". Cretz warned Hillary Clinton before she flew to Tripoli in August 2008: "Muammar al-Gaddafi is notoriously mercurial. He often avoids making eye contact during the initial portion of meetings, and there may be long, uncomfortable periods of silence. "Alternatively, he can be an engaging and charming interlocutor ... a self-styled intellectual and philosopher, he has been eagerly anticipating for several years the opportunity to share with you his views on global affairs." Gaddafi is intellectually curious and a voracious consumer of news and has tasked trusted advisers with summarising in Arabic important books and articles printed in other languages, according to the leaked cables. And when his staff were asked to provide a passport-sized picture of Gaddafi for a visa application, it is reported that the man, whose portrait is prominently on display across the country, told his staff that "any one of hundreds of billboards can be photographed and shrunken to fit the application's criteria." His odd behaviour seems to have rubbed off on his children as well. Gaddafi has eight biological children, seven sons and a daughter. He has also adopted two children, Hanna and Milad. In 2001, his fifth eldest, Hannibal Gaddafi, attacked three Italian policemen with a fire extinguisher. In September 2004, he was briefly detained in Paris after driving a Porsche at high speed in the wrong direction and through red lights down the Champs-Élysées while intoxicated. In 2005, his wife, model Aline Skaf, filed an assault suit against him. And on July 15, 2008, Hannibal and his wife were held for two days and charged with assaulting two of their staff in Geneva, Switzerland. They were released on bail two days later. Swiss imports This move angered Gaddafi and the government put a boycott on Swiss imports, reduced flights between Libya and Switzerland, stopped issuing visas to Swiss citizens, recalled diplomats from Bern and forced all Swiss companies such as ABB and Nestlé to close offices. Libya's General National Maritime Transport Company, which owns a large refinery in Switzerland, also halted oil shipments to Switzerland. After New Year's Day in 2009, Western media reported that Gaddafi's second eldest son, Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, had paid Mariah Carey $1 million (Sh81.5 million) to sing just four songs at a bash on the Caribbean island of St Barts. Another son, Muatassim, repeated the St Barts New Year's fest, this time hiring pop singers Beyoncé and Usher. An unnamed "local political observer" in Tripoli told American diplomats that Muatassim's "carousing and extravagance angered some locals, who viewed his activities as impious and embarrassing to the nation". Gaddafi's son Saif completed his doctorate at the London School of Economics in 2008. His professors remember him as a man committed to democratising his country. "I came to know a young man who was increasingly liberal in his values, committed to reform and a transparent government. He was absolutely committed to constitutional reform," says Prof David Held, who supervised Saif at London. However, Saif's aggressive speech earlier this week as he addressed protesters on Libyan television was judged threatening and intimidating, displaying the autocratic tone his father has established over the years.