Tahir Shah Quotes

As far as Samson was concerned I was just another foreigner in pursuit of a lunatic quest.

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

A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Returning to a city that one has known and loved fills you with a delicious sense of warmth.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Stories are a communal currency of humanity.

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

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

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

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.

I had learned years ago never to give original documents to anyone if I could help it.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

He came to the conclusion that humans confused the content with the container.
They would gorge themselves on great plates of inferior food, imagining it to be delicious because there was simply so much of it. Or, they would make half wits their leaders, merely because they were pleasing to the eye, or because their words were spoken in honeyed voices.
And when it came to information, they would champion weighty tomes that contained almost no real content, while shunning small books that imparted real truth.

You have no idea. when you're a salesman here in Marrakech medima, lying is the first thing you learn. generation after generation, they pass it on. its the secret ingredient the foundationfor a salesman's success. lie well and you make a fortune every day. your wife purrs like a kitten, and your children ealk tall with pride.

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

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

Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.

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.

Nothing is what it seems.
Favoured Pashtu proverb of Jan Fishan Khan.

The ancient paused for a moment, as if his strength were failing. Yet I sensed that there was more to tell. Looking deep into my eyes, he whispered:
'The Gond kingdoms have fallen, their people live dispersed in poverty: the teak trees and the jungles have been cleared ... but the importance of the Gonds must not be forgotten!

The quest for a lost city erodes your body, damaging you beyond all reason. But it is your mind that bears the heaviest toll. Listen to the doubters, the worriers and the weak, and the vaguest hope of success evaporates.

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.

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

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

As I saw it, a little threatening was a good thing. It kept the men on their toes.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Exploration is a dirty game.

Osman and Prideep had been in my employment for some weeks. Every Friday I would take the to lunch. It was the high point of their calender. During the meal I would harangue them as a reminder of what they had been hired for: but my orations never seemed to increase their output. I realised later that, in the East, a commitment to produce does not automatically accompany employment.

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.

Andrew Cairns has written, quite literally, a bewitching novel, one that speaks to an underbelly which lies dormant in us all. The Witch's List bridges our world of convention, with that of a fabulous Twlilight Zone, what may be true reality
a realm of magic and ultimate possibility. I recommend this book because, behind the smokescreen of simplicity, there lies a masked bedrock of extraordinary power.

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

Inscribed on it was a verse from the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, the eleventh-century Persian mystic. Reading the words aloud I prepared for a most amazing journey:
The sages who have compassed sea and land,
Their secret to search out and understand,
My mind misgives me if they ever solve
The scheme on which the universe is planned.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.