Best 105 quotes of Tahir Shah on MyQuotes

Tahir Shah

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    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.

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    Tahir Shah

    A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    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.

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    Tahir Shah

    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

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    Tahir Shah

    Believe, and what was impossible becomes possible what at first was hidden becomes visible.

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

    Close your senses and the imagination comes alive. It's inside us all, 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.

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    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.

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

    For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.

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    Tahir Shah

    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

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    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.

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    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.

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

    In India everything has a use and a value.

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    Tahir Shah

    In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that i will come to no harm.

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    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.

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

    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.

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    Tahir Shah

    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.

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    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?

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    Tahir Shah

    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.

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    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.

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    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.

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    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. With such a book the impact isn't necessarily obvious at first...but the more you read it and re-read it, and live with it, and travel with it, the more it speaks to you, and the more you realize that you cannot live without that book. It's then that the wisdom hidden inside, the seed, is passed on.

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

    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.

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

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

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    Tahir Shah

    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Tahir Shah

    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.

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    Tahir Shah

    There’s nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.

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    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.