Top 100 Tahir Shah Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. Calcutta's the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat.
Tahir Shah
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.
Tahir Shah
#13. 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
#14. With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.
Tahir Shah
#15. Everyone knows that even the best exorcism has to be renewed once in a while.
Tahir Shah
#16. In any case, a little danger is a small price to pay for ridding a place of tourists.
Tahir Shah
#17. 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
#18. We had the kind of conversations that only great friends can ever share. They were touched with magic.
Tahir Shah
#19. Returning to a city that one has known and loved fills you with a delicious sense of warmth.
Tahir Shah
#20. Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.
Tahir Shah
#21. 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
#22. The idea of my heart dancing with delight was far too good to pass up.
Tahir Shah
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. A journey of observation must leave as much as possible to chance. Random movement is the best plan for maximum observation
Tahir Shah
#26. Back at the guest house I tried to acclimatise. A travel-worn adventurer had once told me that leaning with one's head dangling over the end of a bed was the best way to achieve this. It was while I was in this position, the blood rushing to my temples, that the door swung open.
Tahir Shah
#27. 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
#28. Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.
Tahir Shah
#29. 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
#30. It was an awkward moment. We were burning down our host's house, a situation which any guest seeks to avoid.
Tahir Shah
#31. A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.
Tahir Shah
#32. As far as Samson was concerned I was just another foreigner in pursuit of a lunatic quest.
Tahir Shah
#33. My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.
Tahir Shah
#34. Stories are a communal currency of humanity.
Tahir Shah
#35. [T]hrough bitter experience I have learned that it is best to promise little and then to reward hard work with generosity.
Tahir Shah
#36. In the world of the Machiguenga, sadness could be equated with anger, and anger was a perilous emotion, by which a foreigner could lose his life.
Tahir Shah
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. Running an expedition can bring out the worst in a man. It can make you a power-crazed monster.
Tahir Shah
#40. The first rule of an expedition is that everyone should stick together.
Tahir Shah
#41. 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
#42. As anyone who's ever taken an Ethiopian bus knows, there is an unwritten rule that the windows must remain firmly closed.
Tahir Shah
#43. 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
#44. Two reeds drink from the same stream. One is hollow, the other is sugarcane. - MOROCCAN PROVERB
Tahir Shah
#45. 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
#46. Nothing is what it seems.
Favoured Pashtu proverb of Jan Fishan Khan.
Tahir Shah
#47. My journey to the land of the Shuar tribe had taught me the importance of practical gifts.
Tahir Shah
#48. Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.
Tahir Shah
#49. There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.
Tahir Shah
#50. As the man was bundled into an armoured police van, he turned and shouted: 'Don't waste your life following others! Be individual! Live your dreams!'
I stood there thinking. He was right. Ours is a society of followers, trapped by an island mentality.
Tahir Shah
#51. 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
#52. In India everything has a use and a value.
Tahir Shah
#53. The only thing they valued higher than ammunition were Man United footballs.
Tahir Shah
#54. Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones.
Tahir Shah
#55. Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.
Tahir Shah
#56. What came next was a new experience for for both the fish and me
Tahir Shah
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. To Succeed, you must reach for the stars, and let your imagination find its own path
Tahir Shah
#61. 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
#62. In some warped way, having an embalmed body with us made perfect sense.
Tahir Shah
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust.
Tahir Shah
#66. Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.
Tahir Shah
#67. 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
#68. In Morocco, before you even get to the matter of the sale, you have to coax the owner to sell.
Tahir Shah
#69. 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
#70. Money spent on good-quality gear is always money well spent.
Tahir Shah
#71. There is nothing like a train journey for reflection.
Tahir Shah
#72. In Morocco," said Osman, "word spreads like a fire tearing through the depths of Hell.
Tahir Shah
#73. The desert was bad, but nothing could compare with the horrors of a tropical rain forest.
Tahir Shah
#74. 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
#75. Bombay is a city where gossip is treated as a commodity.
Tahir Shah
#76. As I see the world, there's one element that's even more corrosive than missionaries: tourists. It's not that I feel above them in any way, but that the very places they patronize are destroyed by their affection.
Tahir Shah
#77. 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
#78. My father looked on in disbelief, overwhelmed that his son had been taught to eat glass and relish it.
Tahir Shah
#79. We may yearn for rustic detail and old-world charm, but those who have it set their minds on vinyl wallpaper, fitted carpets and all mod cons.
Tahir Shah
#80. 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
#81. The forest did not tolerate frailty of body or mind. Show your weakness, and it would consume you without hesitation.
Tahir Shah
#82. 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
#83. Buy a house in a foreign country and, it seems, that anything which can go wrong usually does.
Tahir Shah
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. Nothing was really so important to my father as the achievement of selflessness. He rarely mentioned it directly, but tried to guide us to it in a roundabout way.
Tahir Shah
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead.
Tahir Shah
#94. 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
#95. 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
#96. In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it.
Tahir Shah
#97. The ability to tell a good route from a terrible one is a valuable skill when leading an expedition. Unfortunately for us all, it was a skill I did not possess.
Tahir Shah
#98. There's nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.
Tahir Shah
#99. It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
Tahir Shah
#100. The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
Tahir Shah
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