Tahir Shah Quotes

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.

Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.

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 solveThe scheme on which the universe is planned.

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!

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

Exploration is a dirty game.

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

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

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.

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.

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

There is nothing like a train journey for reflection.

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.

Venture to a remote corner of a faraway land and, from the moment you get there, every person and every thing becomes an obstacle, designed to entrap you, to stop you proceeding on your way.

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.

The porters could always be coaxed to continue a little further through driving rain by the mere suggestion of a Pot Noodle at the end.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I struggled to think pure thoughts, as Hector sucked out my psyche with his eyes.

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.

Prideep pointed to the flames of paraffin lamps as they came alive in the distance and cackled in awe at the experience. (…) I was to discover that making tasty soup with one carrot, ten peas and a little dishwater, was his greatest skill. One wondered what the man would be capable of creating with a blender and a non-stick frying-pan.

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

As far as I was concerned, a little danger of head-shrinking is a small price to pay in return for a people who have remained true to an ancient code.

Previous experience had taught me that any expedition marches on its stomach.

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.

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.

With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As anyone who's ever taken an Ethiopian bus knows, there is an unwritten rule that the windows must remain firmly closed.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

In India everything has a use and a value.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

In any case, a little danger is a small price to pay for ridding a place of tourists.