Tahir Shah Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

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

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

With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

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. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The idea of my heart dancing with delight was far too good to pass up. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

Stories are a communal currency of humanity. — Tahir Shah

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

Real terror is a crippling experience. You sweat so much that your skin goes all wrinkly like when you've been in the bath all afternoon. And then the scent of your sweat changes. It smells like cat pee, no doubt from the adrenalin. However hard you wash, it won't come off. It smothers you, as your muscles become frozen with acid and your mind paralysed by despair. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exploration is a dirty game. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

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

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. — Tahir Shah

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

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

What came next was a new experience for for both the fish and me — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

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

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

In Morocco," said Osman, "word spreads like a fire tearing through the depths of Hell. — Tahir Shah

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. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bombay is a city where gossip is treated as a commodity. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

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

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. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

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

Running an expedition can bring out the worst in a man. It can make you a power-crazed monster. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

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

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. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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! — Tahir Shah

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

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. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Tahir Shah

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

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

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

There is nothing like a train journey for reflection. — Tahir Shah

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

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