Tahir Shah famous quotes

The desert was bad, but nothing could compare with the horrors of a tropical rain forest.
-- Tahir Shah

#Rain #Desert #Forests

With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.
-- Tahir Shah

#Teamwork #Achievement #Teammate

A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.
-- Tahir Shah

#Journey #Merit

Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.
-- Tahir Shah

#Order #Priorities #Survival

Calcutta's the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat.
-- Tahir Shah

#Cities #Stranger #Calcutta

My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the capability of heighetned thought. Learn to use your eyes as if they are your ears, he said, and you become connected with the ancient heritage of man, a dream world for the waking mind.
-- Tahir Shah

#Dream #Father #Eye

Money spent on good-quality gear is always money well spent
-- Tahir Shah

#Quality #Gears #Wells

For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.
-- Tahir Shah

#Country #Father #Listening

Most journeys have a clear beginning, but on some the ending is less well-defined. The question is, at what point do you bite your lip and head for home?
-- Tahir Shah

#Travel #Home #Journey

Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.
-- Tahir Shah

#Enlightenment

I believe that Marrakech ought to be earned as a destination. The journey is the preparation for the experience. Reaching it too fast derides it, makes it a little less easy to understand.
-- Tahir Shah

#Believe #Journey #Preparation

My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.
-- Tahir Shah

#Father #Heritage #Stories

If hot food is they key to maintaining an expedition's stamina, then low grade gut-rot alcohol is the key to sustaining its sense of pleasure.
-- Tahir Shah

#Keys #Alcohol #Hot

The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
-- Tahir Shah

#Men #Way #Taste

It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
-- Tahir Shah

#Ancestry #Middle East #Impossible

Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.
-- Tahir Shah

#Iron #People #Nerves

In Morocco, before you even get to the matter of the sale, you have to coax the owner to sell.
-- Tahir Shah

#Matter #Morocco #Owners

Buy a house in a foreign country and, it seems, that anything which can go wrong usually does.
-- Tahir Shah

#Country #House #Doe

The Occident has never found it easy to grasp the strange netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist in a realm overlaid our own.
-- Tahir Shah

#Believe #Islam #Followers

Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood.
-- Tahir Shah

#Book #Blood #Long

A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.
-- Tahir Shah

#Long #Imagination #Littles

There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.
-- Tahir Shah

#Giving #Mules #Entourage

I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.
-- Tahir Shah

#Hands #Gains #Upper Hand

Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.
-- Tahir Shah

#Country #Moving #Two

Lured by the wilderness, and by the chance of spotting rare desert elephants, a few intrepid tourists make their way to the Skeleton Coast each year. It's just about as remote as any tourist destination on earth, but one that pays fabulous dividends.
-- Tahir Shah

#Skeletons #Years #Elephants

A man who embarks on a journey must know when to end it.
-- Tahir Shah

#Men #Journey #Ends

Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.
-- Tahir Shah

#Journey #Stuff #Too Much

Visit Cape Town and history is never far from your grasp. It lingers in the air, a scent on the breezy, an explanation of circumstance that shaped the Rainbow People. Stroll around the old downtown and it's impossible not to be affected by the trials and tribulations of the struggle. But, in many ways, it is the sense of triumph in the face of such adversity that makes the experience all the more poignant.
-- Tahir Shah

#Struggle #Adversity #Air

On a harsh expedition, there's no space for anyone who does not intend to finish.
-- Tahir Shah

#Travel #Space #Doe

The forest did not tolerate frailty of body or mind. Show your weakness, and it would consume you without hesitation.
-- Tahir Shah

#Mind #Body #Forests

The first rule of an expedition is that everyone should stick together.
-- Tahir Shah

#Together #Firsts #Sticks

To Succeed, you must reach for the stars, and let your imagination find its own path
-- Tahir Shah

#Stars #Imagination #Path

Usually, there is nothing more pleasing that returning to a place where you have endured hardship.
-- Tahir Shah

#Travel #Hardship #Pleasure

Foras Road has a sordid reputation (…) Old crones sat in doorways, while their daughters were pushed out to earn money. It is intriguing that a society which is very covert with sexuality should be so straightforward about prostitution.
-- Tahir Shah

#Daughter #Doorways #Reputation

A cross between a foreign legion boot-camp and a secret-society initiation ritual, the ordeals were grounded in pain. One thing was obvious: the agenda, which was dedicated to grave discomfort, had been drawn up by a passionate sadist.
-- Tahir Shah

#Pain #Secret #Passionate

The pursuit of illusion is not about studying for prizes, or for study's sake. There's no right or wrong, no pass or fail.
-- Tahir Shah

#Sake #Study #Illusion

Spend sixteen weeks in the jungle and you being to question your own sanity, especially when you are the one goading everyone else ahead.
-- Tahir Shah

#Travel #Team #Sixteen

For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news -- as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home
-- Tahir Shah

#Home #Discovery #Watches

Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood. With such a book the impact isn't necessarily obvious at first...but the more you read it and re-read it, and live with it, and travel with it, the more it speaks to you, and the more you realize that you cannot live without that book. It's then that the wisdom hidden inside, the seed, is passed on.
-- Tahir Shah

#Book #Blood #Impact

Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom
-- Tahir Shah

#Reading #Doors #Water

The inertia of a jungle village is a dangerous thing. Before you know it your whole life has slipped by and you are still waiting there.
-- Tahir Shah

#Waiting #Village #Dangerous

There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one's elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades.
-- Tahir Shah

#Glasses #Elbows #Razors

The model of publishing is changing and its happening right now, but most publishers are so frightened, they just dont know how to embrace it.
-- Tahir Shah

#Embrace #Frightened #Publishing

Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead.
-- Tahir Shah

#Journey #Way #Taught

The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.
-- Tahir Shah

#Real #Cutting #Cities

There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.
-- Tahir Shah

#Fear #Men #Bullets

I was no longer troubled when he pulled out a machete in a crowded bar, tried to pick up schoolgirls, or threatened to scalp us, then rip off our heads and scoop out our brains.
-- Tahir Shah

#Fear #Rip #Brain

The rain of Madre de Dios is similar to that of the Amazon, but there is a petrifying aspect to it, as if it seeks to wound rather than to nurture.
-- Tahir Shah

#Fear #Rain #Dio

Close your senses and the imagination comes alive. It's inside us all, dulled by endless television reruns and by a society that reins in fantasy as something not to be trusted, something to be purged. But it's in there, deep inside, a spark waiting to set a touch-paper alight.
-- Tahir Shah

#Imagination #Waiting #Alive

To be selfless, you would give charity anonymously, walj softly on the earth, and look out for others-even total strangers-before you look out for yourself. For the Arab mind, the self is an obstacle, an impediment, in humanity's quest foe real progress.
-- Tahir Shah

#Real #Self #Giving

Real travel is not about the highlights with which you dazzle your friends once you're home. It's about the loneliness, the solitude, the evenings spent by yourself, pining to be somewhere else. Those are the moments of true value. You feel half proud of them and half ashamed and you hold them to your heart.
-- Tahir Shah

#Real #Loneliness #Home

Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.
-- Tahir Shah

#Cities #Obsession #Lost

Believe, and what was impossible becomes possible what at first was hidden becomes visible.
-- Tahir Shah

#Believe #Firsts #Impossible

Stories are not like the real world; they aren't held back by what we know is false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel inside.
-- Tahir Shah

#Real #Important #Stories

Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.
-- Tahir Shah

#Luxury #Alternatives #Contemplation

Through bitter experience I have learned that it is best to promise little and then to reward hard work with generosity.
-- Tahir Shah

#Hard Work #Generosity #Promise

On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust.
-- Tahir Shah

#Team #Journey #Important

These days no one challenges us,' he said. 'And because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we have all become lazy.
-- Tahir Shah

#Hard Work #Challenges #Lazy

Settling into a new country is like getting used to a new pair of shoes. At first they pinch a little, but you like the way they look, so you carry on. The longer you have them, the more comfortable they become. Until one day without realizing it you reach a glorious plateau. Wearing those shoes is like wearing no shoes at all. The more scuffed they get, the more you love them and the more you can't imagine life without them.
-- Tahir Shah

#Country #Shoes #One Day

In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it.
-- Tahir Shah

#Confusing #India #Explanation

In India everything has a use and a value.
-- Tahir Shah

#India #Use #Values

Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones.
-- Tahir Shah

#Army #Boys #Men

There can be few situations more fearful than breaking down in darkness on the highway leading to Casablanca. I have rarely felt quite so vulnerable or alone.
-- Tahir Shah

#Fear #Darkness #Vulnerable

The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it.
-- Tahir Shah

#Skeletons #Fire #Ghouls

I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it.
-- Tahir Shah

#Travel #Poverty #Becoming

In some peculiar way, indeed, the rules were now beginning to seem quite logical. It was then I knew that I had been in India long enough.
-- Tahir Shah

#Travel #Long #Peculiar

The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after two minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless.
-- Tahir Shah

#Travel #Two #Friendly

One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.
-- Tahir Shah

#Travel #Hygiene

Where does one go in a tremendous city like Calcutta to find insider information? I recalled India's golden rule: do the opposite of what would be normal anywhere else.
-- Tahir Shah

#Travel #Opposites #Cities

For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.
-- Tahir Shah

#Travel #Journey #Treasure

As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.
-- Tahir Shah

#Travel #Hair #Sticks

There’s nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.
-- Tahir Shah

#Blood #Quests

In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that i will come to no harm.
-- Tahir Shah

#Moments #Harm #Uncertainty

During the days I felt myself slipping into a kind of madness. Solitary confinement has an astonishing effect on the mind. The trip was to stay calm and keep myself occupied. I spent hours working out how to break free. But trying to escape would have been instant suicide.
-- Tahir Shah

#Suicide #Work Out #Mind