Sayyid Tahir al-Hashimi Quotes
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Money spent on good-quality gear is always money well spent
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As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.
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Calcutta's the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat.
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Close your senses and the imagination comes alive. It's inside us all, dulled by endless television reruns and by a society that reins in fantasy as something not to be trusted, something to be purged. But it's in there, deep inside, a spark waiting to set a touch-paper alight.
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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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There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.
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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?
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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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For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news -- as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home
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I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.
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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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The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.
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Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead.
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With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.
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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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In Morocco, before you even get to the matter of the sale, you have to coax the owner to sell.
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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.
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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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A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.
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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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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.
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On a harsh expedition, there's no space for anyone who does not intend to finish.
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Buy a house in a foreign country and, it seems, that anything which can go wrong usually does.
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A man who embarks on a journey must know when to end it.