Tahir Shah Quotes

In Morocco," said Osman, "word spreads like a fire tearing through the depths of Hell.
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
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
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
Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.
Tahir Shah
Bombay is a city where gossip is treated as a commodity.
Tahir Shah
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.
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
It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
Tahir Shah
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.
Tahir Shah
My father looked on in disbelief, overwhelmed that his son had been taught to eat glass and relish it.
Tahir Shah
There is nothing like a train journey for reflection.
Tahir Shah
Because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we all have become lazy. Lazy people are like cancer. They spread. Before you know it, the entire country is destroyed.
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
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
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
The forest did not tolerate frailty of body or mind. Show your weakness, and it would consume you without hesitation.
Tahir Shah
In any case, a little danger is a small price to pay for ridding a place of tourists.
Tahir Shah
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.
Tahir Shah
With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.
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 taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
Tahir Shah
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.
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
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
Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.
Tahir Shah
Stories are a communal currency of humanity.
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
In India everything has a use and a value.
Tahir Shah
The only thing they valued higher than ammunition were Man United footballs.
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
The first rule of an expedition is that everyone should stick together.
Tahir Shah
A man who embarks on a journey must know when to end it.
Tahir Shah
Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.
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
There's nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.
Tahir Shah
As far as Samson was concerned I was just another foreigner in pursuit of a lunatic quest.
Tahir Shah
A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.
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
My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.
Tahir Shah
For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.
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
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.
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
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
Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.
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
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
Exploration is a dirty game.
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
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
Only a man who has his health, a full stomach and wears clean clothes would ever entertain the notion of tracking down the greatest lost city on Earth.
Tahir Shah
In some warped way, having an embalmed body with us made perfect sense.
Tahir Shah
Previous experience had taught me that any expedition marches on its stomach.
Tahir Shah
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.
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
My journey to the land of the Shuar tribe had taught me the importance of practical gifts.
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
The ability to tell a good route from a terrible one is a valuable skill when leading an expedition. Unfortunately for us all, it was a skill I did not possess.
Tahir Shah
I struggled to think pure thoughts, as Hector sucked out my psyche with his eyes.
Tahir Shah