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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.
Tahir Shah
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Tahir Shah
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: November 16
Author
Comedian
Explorer
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Would
Travel
Insiders
Like
City
Tremendous
Normal
Opposite
Cities
Anywhere
Information
Opposites
Else
Golden
Insider
Doe
India
Recalled
Find
Rule
Calcutta
More quotes by Tahir Shah
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.
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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For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.
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.
Tahir Shah
I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.
Tahir Shah
In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it.
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.
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.
Tahir Shah
There’s nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.
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Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones.
Tahir Shah
The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
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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.
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.
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
Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.
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
There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.
Tahir Shah
To be selfless, you would give charity anonymously, walj softly on the earth, and look out for others-even total strangers-before you look out for yourself. For the Arab mind, the self is an obstacle, an impediment, in humanity's quest foe real progress.
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
Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.
Tahir Shah