Tahir Shah Quotes
Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.
A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.
Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.
Calcutta's the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat.
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.
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.
My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.
Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.
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?
I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.
Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones.
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
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.
For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.
The forest did not tolerate frailty of body or mind. Show your weakness, and it would consume you without hesitation.
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.
The desert was bad, but nothing could compare with the horrors of a tropical rain forest.
In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it.
Believe, and what was impossible becomes possible what at first was hidden becomes visible.
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.
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.
As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.
Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead.
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 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.
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.
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.
For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.
On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust.
To Succeed, you must reach for the stars, and let your imagination find its own path
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.
Usually, there is nothing more pleasing that returning to a place where you have endured hardship.
On a harsh expedition, there's no space for anyone who does not intend to finish.
In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that I will come to no harm.
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.
There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.
One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.
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.
Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.
The first rule of an expedition is that everyone should stick together.
A man who embarks on a journey must know when to end it.
Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.
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 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.
The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
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.