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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.

Tahir Shah

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Tahir Shah
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: November 16
Author
Comedian
Explorer
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Pretend
Iron
Endure
Explorers
Terrible
Breed
Ability
Nerve
Like
Select
People
Hardship
Nerves

More quotes by Tahir Shah

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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
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My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.
Tahir Shah
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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.
Tahir Shah
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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.
Tahir Shah
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Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.
Tahir Shah
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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
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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
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Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.
Tahir Shah
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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
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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.
Tahir Shah
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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.
Tahir Shah
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One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.
Tahir Shah
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In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that i will come to no harm.
Tahir Shah
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There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.
Tahir Shah
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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.
Tahir Shah
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In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it.
Tahir Shah
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Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.
Tahir Shah
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Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead.
Tahir Shah
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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
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In Morocco, before you even get to the matter of the sale, you have to coax the owner to sell.
Tahir Shah