Pilgrimage Routes, or How to Find Your Inner Backpacker

The world's pilgrimage routes are filled with spiritual seekers - but also with everyday backpacking women fleeing modern life and looking for serenity, or just for something else.

What is a pilgrimage, exactly?

A pilgrimage is usually a spiritual journey, often arduous and demanding, that involves travel to sacred sites - most often a shrine or site of religious or mystical importance.

But it's not always like this.

Many women undertake cultural pilgrimages with a mundane twist. These can range from music pilgrimages - a visit to Graceland in the footsteps of Elvis, for example, or to Abbey Road in search of Beatles history - or a literary pilgrimage to bring great literature to life.

For the more politically minded, pilgrimages can take place to the tombs of leaders like Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square or Mao Tse Tung's in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

There are even pop culture or cult pilgrimages - in the steps of the Da Vinci Code, for example, or around New Zealand to visit film locations for Lord of the Rings.

A Taste of History

Pilgrimage routes have been traced since Antiquity - to Karnak and Thebes in Egypt, to Ephesus in Byzantium and to Delphi in Greece - and once each four years, during the Olympic Games, to the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. But only with Christianity did pilgrimages really take off.

Delphi, Greece
Photo: Philippe Romagon via Flickr CC

Pilgrims were usually men - pilgrimages were seen as too dangerous for women - and almost too tempting, leading to 'loose morals'.

But that didn't stop women.

Empress Helena, Emperor Constantine's mother, was already enjoying pilgrimage travel some 1700 years ago between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. A Spanish nun, Egeria, followed in her footsteps a few years later.

In medieval times, literature was filled with stories that served as warnings to honest women: in one, Saracens captured a wealthy pregnant noblewoman on a pilgrimage; in another, a female pilgrim was raped - she ended up in a harem. Enough to discourage any honest female pilgrim!

But no, this didn't stop intrepid women from tracing their own pilgrimage routes, but it did ensure only the bravest ten percent did so.

Today, women don't need to avoid pilgrimages anymore - and no one questions whether we are 'honest women' either.

That said, the same rules apply to pilgrimage routes as they do to other rules for backpacking women: dress modestly and be culturally appropriate, and don't show off with money or possessions.

A Renewed Faith

Many pilgrimage routes are well-known: the Muslim Hajj, which should be undertaken at least once in a lifetime by all healthy Muslims who can afford it; following in the steps of the Buddha; Catholic pilgrimages such as the pilgrimage to Santiago, or El Camino (Way of St James) in Spain or Lourdes in France; the Hindu Chardham; or the Jewish pilgrimage to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

Some religious pilgrimage routes are best traveled in a specific manner - pilgrims on the Camino, for example, are encouraged to arrive on foot, horseback or bicycle, at least towards the end.

But what counts is what you experience as a result. Wherever you go, whatever you do, your pilgrimage will always be your special spiritual adventure, to relive and to remember.

We'd love to hear about it if you have! Where did you go? Was it difficult? Were you alone or with others? How did it change you? What were your reasons for going? Would you do it again?

Please tell us about where your pilgrimage took place and what kind of experience it was for you - we'd love to know more about your pilgrimage experience!

Click below to see contributions from other visitors to this page...

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