Quotes About Exploration

There are two ways to find a lost city. The first is to rely on luck alone, the second is to control all the information.

Buy a house in a foreign country and, it seems, that anything which can go wrong usually does.

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.

A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.

Exploration is a dirty game.

As I see the world, there's one element that's even more corrosive than missionaries: tourists. It's not that I feel above them in any way, but that the very places they patronize are destroyed by their affection.

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.

The ability to tell a good route from a terrible one is a valuable skill when leading an expedition. Unfortunately for us all, it was a skill I did not possess.

Inscribed on it was a verse from the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam, the eleventh-century Persian mystic. Reading the words aloud I prepared for a most amazing journey: The sages who have compassed sea and land, Their secret to search out and understand, My mind misgives me if they ever solve The scheme on which the universe is planned.

Normally I would have been the first to go in search of cannibal monks, particularly as I had heard of a similar tradition at a nunnery in the Philippines. It's the sort of quest I can't resist.

As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.

Previous experience had taught me that any expedition marches on its stomach.

For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.

What came next was a new experience for for both the fish and me

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.

Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead.

There's nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.

Ours was not going to be a clone of the usual expeditions, oozing with sleekness. It was clear from the start that oddity was our advantage.

My journey to the land of the Shuar tribe had taught me the importance of practical gifts.

Back at the guest house I tried to acclimatise. A travel-worn adventurer had once told me that leaning with one's head dangling over the end of a bed was the best way to achieve this. It was while I was in this position, the blood rushing to my temples, that the door swung open.

In any case, a little danger is a small price to pay for ridding a place of tourists.

When I am about to embark on a difficult journey, I comfort myself by reading the accounts of the great nineteenth-century travellers, men like Stanley, Burton, Speke, Burckhardt and Barth.

Much travel is needed before a raw man is ripened. Arab