Tahir Shah

As far as I was concerned, a little danger of head-shrinking is a small price to pay in return for a people who have remained true to an ancient code.

The forest did not tolerate frailty of body or mind. Show your weakness, and it would consume you without hesitation.

Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi.

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.

There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.

In the world of the Machiguenga, sadness could be equated with anger, and anger was a perilous emotion, by which a foreigner could lose his life.

With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.

An intelligent enemy,' he would say, stroking his beard as if it were a bristly pet, 'rather than a foolish friend.' Or, 'He learnt the language of pigeons, and forgot his own.' Or, the favourite of Jan Fishan Khan: 'Nothing is what it seems.

The taste for glory can make ordinary men behave in extraordinary ways.

Venture to a remote corner of a faraway land and, from the moment you get there, every person and every thing becomes an obstacle, designed to entrap you, to stop you proceeding on your way.

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.

But in Africa bureaucrats are usually too proud to accept a bribe, something I admire when I'm not the one being arrested.

Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.

Stories are a communal currency of humanity.

My father never told us how the stories worked. He didn't reveal the layers, the nuggets of information, the fragments of truth and fantasy. He didn't need to -- because, given the right conditions, the stories activated, sowing themselves.

In India everything has a use and a value.

The only thing they valued higher than ammunition were Man United footballs.

A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.