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Enthralled by a line from the chronicle of a sixteenth-century monk which suggested that the Incas 'flew over the jungle like birds', and by the recurring theme of flying in Peruvian folklore, Tahir Shah sets out to discover whether the Incas really did fly or glide above the rainforest of Peru.Or was the Spanish cleric alluding to flight of a different kind - one inspired by a powerful hallucinogen, the so-called Vine of the Dead? After gathering equipment in London - and advice, not least from Sir Wilfred Thesiger - Shah's long quest begins. Picking up clues as he goes, the trail begins at the Atacama Desert with its immense cryptic Nazca Lines and thirty thousand mummified corpses. Then, on through the Peruvian hinterland of the Altiplano and, finally, to an epic river journey up the Amazon. There, lost in its seething green rainforest, he discovers the secrets of the Shuar, a tribe formerly infamous for shrinking human heads. Even for a traveller not unused to surreal adventure, there are many extraordinary encounters in this astounding travel book.Gruesome but often hilarious, Trail of Feathers is peppered with madmen and dreamers, with sorcerers, con-men and jungle experts. Each one reveals a little more of the puzzle, before Tahir Shah can at last discover the truth about the Birdmen of Peru.

When the Spanish Conquistadors swept through Peru in the sixteenth century, they were searching for great golden treasure. In 1572 they stormed the Inca stronghold of Vilcabamba, only to find the city deserted, burned, and already stripped of its wealth. A legend says that the Incas had retreated deep into the jungle, where they built another magnificent city in an inaccessible quarter of the cloud forest. And for more than four centuries explorers and adventurers, archaeologists and warrior-priests have searched for the gold and riches of the Incas, and this lost city of Paititi, known by the local Machiguenga tribe as 'The House of the Tiger King'. After the lost city obsession had gnawed away at Tahir Shah for almost a decade, he could stand it no more. He put together an expedition and set out into Peru's Madre de Dios jungle, the densest cloud forest on Earth. He teams up with Pancho, a Machiguenga warrior who asserts that in his youth he came upon a massive series of stone ruins deep in the jungle. Pancho's ambition was to leave the jungle and visit a 'live' bustling city so the two men make a pact: if Pancho takes Shah to Paititi, then he will take Pancho to the Peruvian capital. House of the Tiger King is the tale of Shah's remarkable adventure to find the greatest lost city of the Americas, and the treasure of the Incas. Along the way he considers others who have spent decades in pursuit of lost cities, and asks why anyone would find it necessary to mount such a quest at all.

For more than a century Henry Rider Haggard's novel King Solomon's Mines has inspired generations of young men to set forth in search of adventure. But long before Rider Haggard's classic, explorers, theologians and scientists scoured the known world for the source of Solomon's astonishing wealth. The Bible's wisest king built a temple at Jerusalem that was said to be more fabulous than any other landmark in the ancient world. Adorned with an abundance of gold, it was said to be gleaned from a mysterious land known as 'Ophir'. Taking his leads from a mixture of texts including the Septuagint, the earliest known form of the Bible, as well as using geological, geographical and folkloric sources, Tahir Shah sets out in search for Solomon's gold mines. For him the obvious place to look is Ethiopia, the ancient and enigmatic realm nestled in the horn of Africa. The ensuing journey takes Shah to a remote cliff-face monastery where the monks pull visitors up on a leather rope, to the ruined castles of Gondar, and to the fabulous rock-hewn churches at Lalibela. Then, in the south of the country, Shah discovers a massive illegal gold mine. Like something out of the Old Testament, there are thousands of men, women and children digging at the ground with their bare hands. In Search of King Solomon's Mines is regarded as a masterpiece of adventure, its twisting narrative itself touched with gold.

Travels With Myself is a dazzling collection of selected writings by bestselling travel writer and novelist, Tahir Shah. Written over twenty years, the pieces form an eclectic treasury of stories from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and beyond. Some consider the lives of women in society - both in East and West. The women-only police stations of Brazil, for instance, as well as the female inmates waiting to die on America's death row, or the young widows who clear landmines for a living in northern Cambodia. More still consider Morocco, where Shah and his family resided for many years in a mansion set squarely in the middle of a sprawling Casablanca shantytown. Yet more reflect on the oddities and contradictions of the modern world, such as why, in India each summer, hundreds of thousands line up to swallow live fish; or how the Model T Ford sounded the death knell of lavish Edwardian ostrich-feather hats.Regarded as a brilliantly original writer, Tahir Shah has gained a worldwide following by perceiving the lands through which he travels with a lens honed to detail. Questioning everything he observes, Shah taps down to a bedrock of wonder which most writers and travellers don't even realise exists.

As a child living in the English countryside, a constant stream of people turned up at Tahir Shah's family home, all in search of his father - the writer and thinker Idries Shah. Among them were literary giants, including the classicist Robert Graves, Nobel laureate Doris Lessing, and the celebrated American novelist, J. D. Salinger.On one occasion when Salinger had just departed, Tahir asked why the author of The Catcher in the Rye wrote books at all. His father responded by saying: 'Salinger writes because if he stops he'll turn to stone.'Inspired by this quote, The Reason to Write is an account of Tahir's journey through the trials and tribulations of what it is to be an author. Describing the ins and outs of the literary world by charting his own experiences, Tahir calls into question the established norms of a publishing system most of us take for granted.A book of exceptional insight, The Reason to Write is packed with tips for budding authors, examples of what has worked and not worked, and an appreciation of how best to navigate the ever-turbulent waters of the literary trade.The overriding message of this often-hilarious literary cornucopia is simple: authors should write for themselves, and keep control - which means never selling out, no matter how appealing the lure.As a bestselling writer, whose forty or more books have been translated into dozens of languages the world over, Tahir Shah is regarded as one of the most original authors working today. The Reason to Write established him as a preeminent expert on the literary arts, as well as a forecaster of the fast-changing landscape of things to come.