Download House of the Tiger King: A Jungle Obsession ePub

Tahir Shah is just simply incomparable in all his books.
He travels to unusual places and has unusual insights. Not to be found anywhere else.
He may have intuitions about human condition, the purpose of our existence in this world similar to his father (Idries Shah) but presented in a different format, accessible to people who prefer the travel format to his fathers teaching stories, lectures and Q&A's.
Whomever you choose to read, you will benefit to the degree commensurate with your honest desires to understand yourself.

This is a really great adventure book about the search for a long lost city in Peru. Tahir Shah is not only a very smart and resilient man but an excellent writer.

`A journey is a fragment of Hell.' This Arab proverb is quoted at the start of `The House of the Tiger King,' the book where Tahir Shah tells of his obsession to find Paititi, the city built by the Incas in Amazon cloud forest.

With him on the plane to Lima are a father-and-son film crew weighed down with equipment, a Bulgarian film student who is filming the film crew, and a Ukranian banker. They fly to Iquitos to persuade a Vietnam vet to join the expedition. The latter agrees, provided he can bring his personal shaman; and the shaman insists on first going to Nazka to find a mummy to bring with them. It soon becomes clear that their intended protector and his shaman spend most of their time stoned on hallucinogenic drugs.

A bus ride from Cusco takes them to the Madre de Dios forest, where they meet Hector who advises and accompanies them. Hector is a Seventh Day Adventist, but also a dreamer prepared, if necessary, to lay down his Bible and rely on older beliefs. The journey through Hell has started. Acting as porters are Machiguenga tribesmen, strong and capable of enduring indescribable hardship, but terrified of the Paititi ruins and of El Tigre, the ghostly predator which haunts the jungle. Progress is painfully slow, mostly on foot through water. Skin is lost from between toes, bees feast on sweat, and the men become host to guinea worms, chigger flies and the virus that causes dengue fever. Impassable rapids block the first attempt, and Tahir is forced to admit what Hector has been telling him: the time is not right.

The second attempt is even more hellish than the first. Ferocious storms add to the expedition's misery and Tahir finds himself the object of the porters' hatred. Journeys can bring out the best, or the worst, in people, he reflects, and this one has brought out the worst in him.

As you read this beautifully written book, you begin to feel that it is more than a single team's search for a lost city. You will gain insight into Tahir Shah's work, but you also begin to realise that what this extraordinary writer is retelling is no less than the journey of Man, when he seeks his own glory above all else.

Ita

If you've read others of Shah's book, The House of the Tiger King will feel both familiar and a little different. Familiar in so far as he writes well, puts himself in unusual predicaments and circles around arcane knowledge without drowning you in the stuff. However, the House of the Tiger King finds him transformed into a more obsessive, more punishing individual. Much of this, of course, drives the story. Despite the things that lighten the story of harsh adventure in the Peruvian jungles (some of which we could do without, such as the tiring references to Pot Noodles), this is a darker tale than usual. The worry is that Shah having written his way around the world, pushing himself further and further for his stories, is not going to run out of stories to write about, but a way in which to write them. He seems to have backed himself into a corner in this one, the intrepid, manic voyager, forgetful of wife and child, driven by obsession. So when the next book comes out, do we find that the obsession was just manufactured for the sake of the book, or can he perform a magician's trick and reinvent himself again?

I have to agree with the previous reviewer - this is a darker book than Shah's other books and it seems to have an angry tone to it where the others were more light-hearted and had funny spots. Shah seems to dislike almost everyone he comes into contact with on this trip and is obsessed (and not in a very nice way) about his goal. I would recommend the Calipher's House or the Sorcerer's Apprentice or the Search for King Solomon's Mines instead - this book was a letdown compared to those.

An epic journey that like any great work of art, can be read in different forms unveiling different layers. Tahir Shah and his search for what the mortals call "impossible".

This author is an amazing writer. The words bring his stories to life in ways others cannot. You can picture the places and what he is experiencing. I have read all his books.