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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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On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust.
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For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
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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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In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it.
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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
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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.
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The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after two minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless.
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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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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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My father used to say that stories are part of the most precious heritage of mankind.
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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Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.
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.
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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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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
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Buy a house in a foreign country and, it seems, that anything which can go wrong usually does.
Tahir Shah