Tahir shah quotes

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.

Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

In India everything has a use and a value.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.

A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.

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.

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