Tahir Shah Quotes
Tahir Shah Quotes
As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.
3109The 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.
4702 Running an expedition can bring out the worst in a man. It can make you a power-crazed monster.
2011 Money spent on good-quality gear is always money well spent.
3875 [T]hrough bitter experience I have learned that it is best to promise little and then to reward hard work with generosity.
1451 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.
4558 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.
4036 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.
3900 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.
3180 Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.
2233 Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead.
1940 I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.
3582 Time spent in India has a extraordinary effect on one. It acts as a barrier that makes the rest of the world seem unreal.
4276 Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.
2889 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.
3619 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.
4458 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.
1921 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.
2540 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.
1838 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
4833 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.
2679 For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.
3029 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.
4626 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.
2179 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.
4039 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.
1607 In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it.
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