Make your travel plans now: These religious pilgrimages are reopening

(TRAVEL) Sacred travel is a part of almost every religion, and healthy 21st century seekers will find many earthly paths to enlightenment opening up, especially once the COVID-19 pandemic passes and travel restrictions will ease. Meanwhile, we can dream!

Here are four spiritual journeys perfect for flexible, hardy, open-minded travelers.

Torii gate at Yashima-ji, in Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. Yashima-ji is temple no. 84 of the Shikoku 88-temple Buddhist pilgrimage. Creative Commons photo.

Shikoku 88 Temples Trail, Shikoku Island, Japan

Japanese Buddhists have been walking the 800-mile perimeter of Shikoku Island for more than 1,200 years, following a track laid down by Kukai, a mystical monk whose spirit still supposedly looks out for his Ohenro pilgrims. Travelers wear traditional white garb and conical hats, sleep in lodges in quaint villages, and stop at forest temples to ring bells, offer prayers, and have their credentials hand-signed in calligraphic ink. The entire walk takes more than a month; most Japanese pilgrims take the bus. 

 Japan has resumed many business operations but is currently restricting entry for non-Japanese citizens.

In the 1800s, a farmer claimed to have dug up a glowing crucifix. A church now stands where he dug up the relic, and pilgrims go there to collect the soil from that spot to apply to injuries or sick parts of their body. Photo by Robert Wilson/Creative Commons.

Chimayo Sanctuary pilgrimage, New Mexico, USA 

The pilgrimage to Chimayo Sanctuary is pure Americana. This road-trip from Santa Fe leads to a Roman Catholic Franciscan mission in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, built on a spot first made holy by Native American and Mexican believers. Spanish friars established a mission here in 1693, and the church, its holy images, and even the dirt it stands on are credited with supernatural healing powers. Hundreds of youth groups, parishes, and veterans walk the rural two-lane roads to Chimayo each year, visiting some of the oldest churches in the United States along the way. Holy Week and Mother’s Day processions are especially colorful and crowded; more than 300,000 people visit the shrine each year.  The Chimayo Sanctuary website has helpful pilgrimage planning information. 

The church is open from 9am to 5pm with limited services and outdoor Mass, following COVID-19 safety guidelines.

The Camino de Santiago stops through many villages in northern Spain. Creative Commons photo.

Camino de Santiago, Spain 

This thousand-year-old, 500-mile trek across the north of Spain to honor the Apostle James has become a latter-day spiritual phenomenon, attracting almost 400,000 pilgrims in 2019 with spectacular landscapes, monumental architecture, international friendships, and budget-priced food and lodging. Its Catholic roots are forever present in roadside crucifixes, pilgrim blessings, and monastic bunkhouses, but people of all faiths – and none – proudly call themselves “pilgrims,” and return again and again to live out this unique physical, mental, and spiritual challenge. No guides or travel agents are needed for this trip; information abounds online.

The Cathedral de Santiago reopened its doors July 1 along with the pilgrims’ reception office.

The European Peace Walk is a two-week trek from Vienna to Trieste, Italy. Travelers stay with local families. Photo from European Peace Walk’s Facebook page.

The European Peace Walk

This “secular pilgrimage” began in 2014 when Irishman Grattan Lynch decided to carry the fellowship he found on the Camino de Santiago into parts of Europe that had languished for decades behind the Iron Curtain. He engineered a two-week trek from Vienna to Trieste, Italy, with local families, church groups and municipalities offering basic food and lodgings at the end of each day’s 25-kilometer walk.

“The aim of the walk was a bit unclear in the beginning,” said Dutch hiker Ria Meinema, one of the pioneers. “We thought it was to ‘celebrate peace,” with breakfast in Austria, lunch in Croatia, dinner in Slovenia…It was a very good experience: undiscovered hiking trails, and local people who were really enthusiastic about receiving us. I loved the beautiful woodlands of Slovenia. We have kept in touch with a lot of EP walkers afterwards. What is special about it is its ongoing reference to war and peace: the Iron Curtain, war memorials and such. It really makes you contemplate how vulnerable and valuable peace is… . It is not a pilgrimage in the classic sense, as there is not an apostle or a shrine waiting for you in Trieste. But the silence and the fellowship are there, for anyone who wants to experience it.”

The Peace Walk was set to “go free” in 2020, with walkers setting out without registrations or set groups, making their own contacts from a list of hosts. COVID-19 put a stop to this year’s plans, but the trail is still marked and the network still in place. Read more details here.

Sacred travel has become an industry in many parts of the world. Buddhists and Hindus have opened their Himalayan pilgrimage paths to spiritual hikers for decades, and South American holy sites like Machu Picchu, Cuzco, Sun Island and Lake Titicaca invite visitors to walk in stone temples in the Andean mountain fastness where Incas once worshiped. Most of these journeys require guides, support vehicles, elaborate planning and lots of money. Like many Christian groups’ “Holy Land Tours,” these trips hover somewhere between pilgrimage and religion-themed package tours. Solitude, suffering, simplicity, a clearly defined traditional route, and a shared purpose or goal, are not usually on the itinerary.

Not every would-be pilgrim has the wherewithal to walk for weeks through a strange land, but happily, pilgrimage is more a matter of what’s in the heart than shrines checked off a list. Often the spiritual traveler “arrives” at his goal while still somewhere along the way. As Saint Augustine wrote: “it is solved by walking.” 

Rebekah Scott is a veteran American journalist who’s lived in Spain for 14 years. She’s reported for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the New York Times, Conde-Nast Traveler, Christianity Today, National Catholic Reporter and many others. She also won a national Religion Newswriters Association Cornell Prize for religion reporting. She currently edits for the Investigative Team of the Associated Press.