About Tahir Shah: Tahir Shah is an Anglo-Afghan Indian author, journalist and documentary maker. He lives in Casablanca, Morocco.
I had learned years ago never to give original documents to anyone if I could help it.
[T]hrough bitter experience I have learned that it is best to promise little and then to reward hard work with generosity.
It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.
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.
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. With such a book the impact isn't necessarily obvious at first...but the more you read it and re-read it, a...
Visit Cape Town and history is never far from your grasp. It lingers in the air, a scent on the breezy, an explanation of circumstance that shaped the Rainbow People. Stroll around the old downtown and it's impossible not to be affected by the trials...
Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.
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 hav...
As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.
For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.
At the last moment, the fish and I exchange a troubled glance. The murrel seems to be demanding an explanation. Alas, I am in no position to start justifying the unusual treatment. What comes next is a new experience for both the fish and me.
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.
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
The idea of my heart dancing with delight was far too good to pass up.
Lured by the wilderness, and by the chance of spotting rare desert elephants, a few intrepid tourists make their way to the Skeleton Coast each year. It's just about as remote as any tourist destination on earth, but one that pays fabulous dividends.
A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.
One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.
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.
With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.
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.
Spend sixteen weeks in the jungle and you being to question your own sanity, especially when you are the one goading everyone else ahead.
