Tahir Shah Quotes
-
Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.
→ -
Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
To Succeed, you must reach for the stars, and let your imagination find its own path
→ -
The forest did not tolerate frailty of body or mind. Show your weakness, and it would consume you without hesitation.
→ -
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.
→ -
There’s nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.
→ -
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.
→ -
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?
→ -
With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.
→ -
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.
→ -
It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
→ -
I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.
→ -
As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.
→ -
In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that i will come to no harm.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
In India everything has a use and a value.
→ -
Lured by the wilderness, and by the chance of spotting rare desert elephants, a few intrepid tourists make their way to the Skeleton Coast each year. It's just about as remote as any tourist destination on earth, but one that pays fabulous dividends.
→ -
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.
→ -
Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones.
→ -
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.
→ -
The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
Spend sixteen weeks in the jungle and you being to question your own sanity, especially when you are the one goading everyone else ahead.
→
Related Authors
-
Charles Lindbergh Aviator -
Jon Krakauer Writer -
Doris Lessing Novelist -
Bruce Chatwin Novelist -
David Sedaris Humorist -
Idries Shah Author -
-
-
Malcolm Gladwell Journalist -
Robert Twigger Author -
Paul Bowles Composer -
Mary Roach Author -
Bill Bryson Author -
Robert E. Ornstein Psychologist -
G. I. Gurdjieff Teacher -
Douglas Adams Writer -
Ibn Arabi Philosopher -
Rumi Poet -
Ibn Battuta Explorer -
Paul Theroux Film writer