"Part of what interested me so much about pilgrimage as a concept—what made me think it might work as a structure to hang a bunch of other stuff (questions of restlessness and purpose and forgiveness) on—was that, the more I read and talked and thought about it, the more capacious the idea seemed: Pretty much...

"The commonality and familiarity of travel may also be seen in the fact that travel is the most common source of metaphors used to explicate transformations and transitions of all sorts, we draw upon the experience of human mobility to define the meaning of death (as a "passing") and the structure of life (as a...

"In medieval times, when life was so narrowly circumscribed, religious pilgrimage was pretty much the only excuse a claustrophobic peasant had to leave his or her stupid little village, so a pilgrimage was an exercise in novelty and adventure under the banner of obligation; now, so many of us feel so surfeited with choice, the...

"It may seem absurd to view a sightseeing tour of Versailles or the Pyramids as a kind of pilgrim’s progress toward spiritual fulfillment -- or it may seem entirely appropriate. For one thing, the pilgrim of yore had more in common with the present-day tourist than many suspect. One of the first books printed in...

"Tourism is a sacred journey, the contemporary counterpart of medieval pilgrimage. It turns on a very contemporary distinction between work and play. It thereby ignores that hard work can be pleasurable and that pleasure can be hard work." --David Brown, "Genuine fakes" (1996)

"Could there be something of the sacred left in the tourist’s experience today? As well as the similarities in scale, modern-day mass tourism maintains some of the metaphysical connotations of the pilgrimage. After all one does not actually purchase anything physical when planning a trip, rather its a means by which we can acquire experiences....

"The structure of tourism is basically identical to that of all ritual behavior: it first translates the tourist into a sacred world, then transforms/renews him, and finally returns him to normality. This other world is sacred because it is out of space and out of time. The normal rules are in abeyance (if not actually...

"Pilgrims were people who figured things out as they walked. On the road you can think forward, you can think back, you can make a list to remember to tell those at home." --Anne Carson, "Kinds of Water" (1987)

"Walking to ease the mind is an objective of the pilgrim. There is a spiritual dimension too: the walk itself is part of the process of purification. Walking is the age-old form of travel, the most fundamental, perhaps the most revealing." --Paul Theroux, The Tao of Travel (2011)

The practice of circumambulation, or walking around a venerated object, is incorporated in many contemporary beliefs and practices, but predates most of them. These ceremonial pilgrimages can go around an entire mountain, a small stupa, a shrine, or even a person. Some religions prefer to follow a clockwise path—others choose a counter-clockwise route. A well-known...

"The practice of soulful travel is to discover the overlapping point between history and everyday life, the way to find the essence of every place, every day: in the markets, small chapels, out-of-the-way parks, craft shops. Curiosity about the extraordinary in the ordinary moves the heart of the traveler intent on seeing behind the veil...

Spring festivals are getting underway , bringing the promise of prime walking weather. Although it'll be a little while before Norway warms up, St. Olav's Way is a trek (and bonafide pilgrimage) to check out. The route stretches about 400 miles (643 km) northwest from Oslo to St. Olav's grave in Trondheim. It traces lakes,...

"Pilgrimage seems to be a means of reinforcing certainties of faith. Independent travel can be about challenging one's idea of living." --Rory MacLean, Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail From Istanbul to India (2006)