All the world’s a shrine, as Shakespeare might have put it. But modern pilgrimages have some surprising destinations. Sarah Tucker sets out
Santiago de Compostela
I recently attended an event where people (predominantly women) were telling their ‘stories’. You know the sort of thing: how and why they had set up their business, awakened from spiritual slumber or swapped a numbing career in high finance for a rewarding part-time job counselling puppies.
But stories are really abstract journeys; movements from one emotional place to another. Little wonder, therefore, that many of these tales of personal reinvention involved physical journeys too. Travel can be either catalyst or cure; the precursor of some momentous change or, conversely, a symptom of change already under way.
Thus, for example, we heard from a woman who had taken the famous pilgrim way to Santiago de Compostela; another who had travelled to Africa to help local women; and a third who, upon returning from India – that land of apparent monopoly on spiritual awakening – decided to swap her high paying job for a less lucrative but more worthwhile endeavour. Whether she would have been able to afford her Indian journey of self-discovery in the first place, if it hadn’t been for the highly paid job, is something of a moot point. But anyway.
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Books and films such as Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun have helped to ingrain a powerful, inspiring idea: in order to find oneself, one must hit rock bottom first. Only then, runs the narrative, can the troubled person grasp that his or her malaise is not normal. Incipient death has become a substitute for life.
Be that as it may, most pilgrimages are first and foremost an opportunity for adventure, rather than the surefire way to piety and blisters. While working on The A to Zen of Travel, my book on therapeutic climates and cultures, I became aware of the extent to which people increasingly use holidays as medicine for stress, broken relationships and battered self-esteem. It is enlightenment that they wish to bring home, not just a crate of duty free anda suntan.
As with most medicines, however, the traveller-in-hope is only ever one poor choice away from an adverse reaction. Choose the wrong place, or the wrong companions, and your pathway to life can turn out to be the highway to hell.
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The mighty Yukon
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Kilimanjaro
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The Inca Trail
The husband of a dear friend of mine once made it to the summit of Everest; a feat which he celebrated by waving my friend’s photo jubilantly in the air for the benefit of his mates on Facebook. From the top of Everest, however, it’s a long way down, with plenty of opportunity for reflection. By the time my friend’s husband got back to Britain, he had decided to divorce her.
Of course, religious routes and destinations still account for a healthy percentage of pilgrimages. Santiago, the Holy Land, Lourdes and the Via Francigena (Canterbury to Rome) all continue to loom large on the pilgrim radar. In India, the Kumbh Mela attracts multitudes of Hindus to bathe in a sacred river, while the Hajj – the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca – represents not just a physical undertaking, but an inward act of intention.
Other inspirational journeys, however, are more like rites of passage. I know many a father who has taken his teenage son along Route 66, traversing Middle America on the back of a Harley. The Inca Trail (exodus.co.uk) to Machu Picchu, in Peru, is another enduring favourite, as is the ascent of Kilimanjaro. Dinner party prattle has this latter feat down as little more than a weekend stroll. In fact, it is a tough assignment; a natural reminder that patience is a virtue hard won.
My own pilgrimages have only ever revealed themselves after the fact: a trip of apparently modest potential has turned out to be a memorable journey of the heart. Shortly after my father died, I found myself amid the majesty of the Yukon. Here the vast Canadian wilderness dredges up buried emotions, catching you unawares and threatening to overwhelm. It blows the mind and lifts the spirit. Robert Service, the ‘Canadian Kipling’, got it right. In The Spell of the Yukon, a veteran digger is lured back in search of more gold – but it’s the place itself, with its “forests where silence has lease”, that truly draws him.
In similar vein, the journey from Delhi to Rajasthan is enthralling by train or car and South Africa’s Garden Route is a singular blaze of beauty, while crossing Antarctica in the snowshoes of Captain Scott – penguin pilgrims trotting alongside, hoping for the holy grail of a fish – constitutes a privilege beyond compare.
Journeys like these may not be conventional pilgrimages. But if they touch the soul, delivering beyond the promises in the brochure, they sit firmly within the pilgrim tradition. For a true pilgrimage is an affair of the heart. The destination is merely a departure point for the next one.
- Sarah’s book The A to Zen of Travel (New Generation Publishing) is available in book shops and via Amazon
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