Tahir Shah Quotes

#1. At the dealership, I pulled out the sieve and toyed with it threateningly. When the salesman was ready for me, I held it up, told him I was not a tourist and demanded a large discount.

Tahir Shah

#2. Bombay is a city where gossip is treated as a commodity.

Tahir Shah

#3. 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

#4. The desert was bad, but nothing could compare with the horrors of a tropical rain forest.

Tahir Shah

#5. In Morocco," said Osman, "word spreads like a fire tearing through the depths of Hell.

Tahir Shah

#6. There is nothing like a train journey for reflection.

Tahir Shah

#7. Money spent on good-quality gear is always money well spent.

Tahir Shah

#8. None of them seemed to mind sliding around in the faeces and choking in the smoke. They were determined not to miss the opportunity of watching a foreigner make a fool of himself.

Tahir Shah

#9. In Morocco, before you even get to the matter of the sale, you have to coax the owner to sell.

Tahir Shah

#10. I'm a fool, that I should simply trick the tourists like everyone else. after all, most of them will never come back. and what are tourists for but for tricking?

Tahir Shah

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

Tahir Shah

#12. On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust.

Tahir Shah

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. In some warped way, having an embalmed body with us made perfect sense.

Tahir Shah

#16. To Succeed, you must reach for the stars, and let your imagination find its own path

Tahir Shah

#17. 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

#18. 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

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

Tahir Shah

#20. What came next was a new experience for for both the fish and me

Tahir Shah

#21. Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.

Tahir Shah

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

Tahir Shah

#23. The only thing they valued higher than ammunition were Man United footballs.

Tahir Shah

#24. In India everything has a use and a value.

Tahir Shah

#25. 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

#26. The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.

Tahir Shah

#27. It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.

Tahir Shah

#28. There's nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.

Tahir Shah

#29. In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it.

Tahir Shah

#30. In the West we are driven by an extreme form of guilt
if you are not seen to be working like a dog, you're perceived as being slothful.

Tahir Shah

#31. 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

#32. Exploration is a dirty game.

Tahir Shah

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

Tahir Shah

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. I am all for curses and superstition, but there's a point at which they start getting in the way. That point had arrived.

Tahir Shah

#38. Because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we all have become lazy. Lazy people are like cancer. They spread. Before you know it, the entire country is destroyed.

Tahir Shah

#39. Time spent in India has a extraordinary effect on one. It acts as a barrier that makes the rest of the world seem unreal.

Tahir Shah

#40. Buy a house in a foreign country and, it seems, that anything which can go wrong usually does.

Tahir Shah

#41. 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

#42. 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

#43. As far as I was concerned, a little danger of head-shrinking is a small price to pay in return for a people who have remained true to an ancient code.

Tahir Shah

#44. A journey of observation must leave as much as possible to chance. Random movement is the best plan for maximum observation

Tahir Shah

#45. 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

#46. There are two ways to find a lost city. The first is to rely on luck alone, the second is to control all the information.

Tahir Shah

#47. The idea of my heart dancing with delight was far too good to pass up.

Tahir Shah

#48. Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.

Tahir Shah

#49. We had the kind of conversations that only great friends can ever share. They were touched with magic.

Tahir Shah

#50. The ants are bad" The Bear
"the ants?"Tahir
"Do not be fooled. They look very small, so harm you don't think of then at all. Then years. Then one day you wake up, and your home has fallen down." Osman.

Tahir Shah

#51. In any case, a little danger is a small price to pay for ridding a place of tourists.

Tahir Shah

#52. Everyone knows that even the best exorcism has to be renewed once in a while.

Tahir Shah

#53. Only a man who has his health, a full stomach and wears clean clothes would ever entertain the notion of tracking down the greatest lost city on Earth.

Tahir Shah

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

Tahir Shah

#55. 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

#56. My father never told us how the stories worked. He didn't reveal the layers, the nuggets of information, the fragments of truth and fantasy. He didn't need to
because, given the right conditions, the stories activated, sowing themselves.

Tahir Shah

#57. 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

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

Tahir Shah

#59. 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

#60. Through a strange kind of geographic arrogance, Europeans like to think that the world was a silent, dark, unknown place until they trooped out and discovered it.

Tahir Shah

#61. Experience has taught me the power of trophies. You may have every knick-knack and useless contraption ever devised, but while they weigh you down, a simple trophy can go a long, long way.

Tahir Shah

#62. 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

#63. But in Africa bureaucrats are usually too proud to accept a bribe, something I admire when I'm not the one being arrested.

Tahir Shah

#64. The situation was different in the jungle. Every inch of ground had to be earned, and was done so through much exertion with the blade.

Tahir Shah

#65. With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.

Tahir Shah

#66. There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.

Tahir Shah

#67. My journey to the land of the Shuar tribe had taught me the importance of practical gifts.

Tahir Shah

#68. 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

#69. Two reeds drink from the same stream. One is hollow, the other is sugarcane. - MOROCCAN PROVERB

Tahir Shah

#70. 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

#71. As anyone who's ever taken an Ethiopian bus knows, there is an unwritten rule that the windows must remain firmly closed.

Tahir Shah

#72. 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

#73. Ours was not going to be a clone of the usual expeditions, oozing with sleekness. It was clear from the start that oddity was our advantage.

Tahir Shah

#74. [T]hrough bitter experience I have learned that it is best to promise little and then to reward hard work with generosity.

Tahir Shah

#75. It was an awkward moment. We were burning down our host's house, a situation which any guest seeks to avoid.

Tahir Shah

#76. 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

#77. Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.

Tahir Shah

#78. The first few hours in the cell were quite stimulating. I'd never been in a prison cell before and was quite enjoying the experience.

Tahir Shah

#79. 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

#80. On a harsh expedition, there's no space for anyone who does not intend to finish.

Tahir Shah

#81. Moroccan traffic isn't like normal traffic. It's armed combat, a war of wills, in which only the very bravest have a chance to survive.

Tahir Shah

#82. Previous experience had taught me that any expedition marches on its stomach.

Tahir Shah

#83. 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

#84. At the last moment, the fish and I exchange a troubled glance. The murrel seems to be demanding an explanation. Alas, I am in no position to start justifying the unusual treatment. What comes next is a new experience for both the fish and me.

Tahir Shah

#85. I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.

Tahir Shah

#86. Venture to a remote corner of a faraway land and, from the moment you get there, every person and every thing becomes an obstacle, designed to entrap you, to stop you proceeding on your way.

Tahir Shah

#87. When I am about to embark on a difficult journey, I comfort myself by reading the accounts of the great nineteenth-century travellers, men like Stanley, Burton, Speke, Burckhardt and Barth.

Tahir Shah

#88. An intelligent enemy,' he would say, stroking his beard as if it were a bristly pet, 'rather than a foolish friend.' Or, 'He learnt the language of pigeons, and forgot his own.' Or, the favourite of Jan Fishan Khan: 'Nothing is what it seems.

Tahir Shah

#89. 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

#90. Usually, there is nothing more pleasing that returning to a place where you have endured hardship.

Tahir Shah

#91. For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.

Tahir Shah

#92. 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

#93. Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.

Tahir Shah

#94. Normally I would have been the first to go in search of cannibal monks, particularly as I had heard of a similar tradition at a nunnery in the Philippines. It's the sort of quest I can't resist.

Tahir Shah

#95. As the head of an expedition, you can't pussyfoot around being polite to everyone. You have to show your teeth once in a while; a little growling goes a long way.

Tahir Shah

#96. A man who embarks on a journey must know when to end it.

Tahir Shah

#97. The last thing we wanted was for the Machiguenga to be sad again. Sadness appeared to bring out their violence.

Tahir Shah

#98. Close your senses and the imagination comes alive. It's inside us al, 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

#99. A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.

Tahir Shah

#100. The porters could always be coaxed to continue a little further through driving rain by the mere suggestion of a Pot Noodle at the end.

Tahir Shah