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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
Find
Rule
Calcutta
Would
Travel
Insiders
Like
City
Tremendous
Normal
Opposite
Cities
Anywhere
Information
Opposites
Else
Golden
Insider
Doe
India
Recalled
More quotes by 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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In Morocco, before you even get to the matter of the sale, you have to coax the owner to sell.
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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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Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.
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On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust.
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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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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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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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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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On a harsh expedition, there's no space for anyone who does not intend to finish.
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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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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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There’s nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.
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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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Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.
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The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
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It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
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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In India everything has a use and a value.
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.
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