Journeys to sacred places appear in nearly every religious tradition and share a recognisable shape.
Separation and return
Leaving ordinary life, undergoing the journey, and coming back changed.
Which anthropologists have described as a common pattern.
Physical difficulty
Effort as part of the practice rather than an obstacle to it.
Which is why walking routes persist despite easier transport.
Community among strangers
Temporary equality among people who would not otherwise meet.
Contemporary pilgrimage
Routes drawing both religious and secular walkers.
Which has grown substantially in recent decades.
Major routes and destinations
Sites drawing millions annually across several traditions.
Which are among the largest regular human gatherings anywhere.
The logistics involved are comparable to those of major cities.
Preparation
Physical, financial and ritual.
Which is frequently described as part of the pilgrimage rather than preliminary to it.
Souvenirs and tokens
Objects brought back as evidence and as blessing.
Which appears across traditions and across centuries.
Economic effects
Local economies built around pilgrim routes.
Which is longstanding rather than a modern commercialisation.
Secular walking
Long-distance routes walked without religious intent.
Which participants frequently describe in similar terms.
The anthropological account
A structure of separation, a transitional phase, and reincorporation.
Which was described in studies of ritual generally and fits pilgrimage closely.
The middle phase, where ordinary social distinctions are suspended, is what participants most often describe as significant.
Motivations
Devotion, petition, penance, bereavement and curiosity.
Which are frequently mixed in the same person.
Modern infrastructure
Accommodation, transport and crowd management at major sites.
Which is a substantial undertaking.
Environmental and local effects
Pressure on sites and communities.
Which several destinations have had to manage actively.
Walking as practice
Slowness and effort as part of the point.
The scale of contemporary pilgrimage
Several destinations receive millions of visitors annually, with some gatherings among the largest peaceful assemblies on earth.
Which requires planning comparable to running a temporary city.
Crowd management at these events has become a field of study in its own right after serious incidents.
Cost and access
Travel expense limiting who can participate.
Which several traditions address through community funding.
Local hosting traditions
Hospitality obligations along established routes.
Which are centuries old in some cases.
Recording the journey
Pilgrim accounts as a literary genre.
Which are valuable historical sources.
Going as a visitor
Respecting the practices of those there for devotional reasons.
Why people go
Surveys of pilgrims consistently find mixed motivations, including many that are not straightforwardly religious.
Which has become more pronounced on routes that also function as long-distance walks.
Participants frequently report that their reasons changed during the journey, which is itself part of the pattern.
Return
The difficulty of reintegrating into ordinary life afterwards.
Which pilgrim accounts describe consistently.
Documented routes
Waymarked paths with accommodation networks.
Which have expanded considerably.
Sites of multiple traditions
Places significant to more than one religion.
Which are frequently contested.
A general note
This describes practice comparatively and makes no claims about any tradition's beliefs.
How this article treats its subject
Everything here is written descriptively. Where a practice belongs to a living religious tradition, the aim is to say accurately what that tradition does and says about it, without arguing for or against its beliefs. Those are questions for the traditions themselves and for the people who belong to them.
Where research is mentioned, the intention is to report what studies have found rather than what enthusiasts or critics have claimed about them, including where the findings are weaker or more contested than popular coverage suggests.
Where to read further
Primary texts in good annotated translations, academic histories, and practitioners speaking about their own tradition are all more reliable than secondary summaries, including this one. Most of the traditions discussed here have extensive scholarly literature that is accessible to general readers, and university presses publish short introductory volumes on nearly all of them.
Where a practice has physical or psychological effects, medical and mental health professionals are the appropriate source of guidance, and nothing here is intended as advice of that kind.
A note on why history matters here
A great deal of contemporary spiritual and wellbeing material presents itself as ancient when it is recent, or as universal when it belongs to a particular tradition and place. Neither of those is necessarily dishonest, and both make it harder to understand what one is actually doing.
Knowing where a practice comes from, who developed it, what it was originally for and what changed along the way does not diminish it. It usually makes it more interesting, and it makes claims about it easier to evaluate.
On sources and disagreement
Scholars disagree about much of this material, sometimes sharply, and where that is the case it has been noted rather than resolved. Presenting contested questions as settled would be more comfortable to read and less accurate.