Tahir Shah Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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