Johannesburg - A pilgrimage is defined as a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Most often it is to a religious shrine.
For example, last month school teacher Ebrahim Mia joined about 2 million people from more than 180 countries who travelled to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Islam’s holiest city.
He felt spiritually renewed by the the Hajj, as the annual Muslim pilgrimage is known, even though it was beset by two tragedies – a crane disaster at the Grand Mosque of Mecca that killed 107 people and wounded 238, and then a stampede in which more than 2 000 people died and almost 1 000 were injured.
One of Christianity’s most important pilgrimages, the Camino de Santiago, is becoming increasingly popular even among people who are not particularly religious as it has been popularised by books, film and television series.
Rather than considering it a religious quest, some do it for the challenge to body and mind, and the appeal of being in a foreign country away from the stresses and strains of everyday living.
The walk to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwest Spain, where the remains of the apostle James are believed to be buried, is also known as the Way of St James.
After being hijacked for the second time and feeling rattled by crime in South Africa, communications specialist Janine Hills walked 800km to the shrine, and felt liberated by the experience.
Catholics may go to Rome, Jews to Jerusalem, Hindus to the Himalayas, and Buddhists to Nepal, but not all pilgrimages are to places important to an individual’s faith – sometimes the journey is to a place of personal significance – or into yourself. Journalist Duncan Guy went on an epic bike ride to find inner strength and serenity after his beloved father, Robin Guy, a well-known bird expert from KwaZulu-Natal, was shot during a botched robbery in Bryanston, Joburg, over the Christmas period of 2007.
Dessislava Ivanova went to Nepal for yoga teacher training and ended up finding purpose.
Here, in their own words, the four people describe the modern pilgrimages that changed their lives:
l Dessislava Ivanova
Life coach and yoga instructor who went to Nepal
I can’t remember when I first felt the desire to go to Nepal. I can pinpoint the first time I wanted to travel to Peru or to Egypt, but it was as though going to Nepal had always been part of my life’s plan; I was just waiting for the right time.
I was busy with exams, my estate agency business, separation and the daily demands of being a mother when one day in March this year, I opened my laptop and, without doing any research, booked a yoga teacher training course in Nepal. I’ve loved yoga for more than 10 years, and I wanted to go to Nepal, so it was a good opportunity to combine both.
That was the moment the magic began, I believe. As soon as I gave myself permission to align with the calling within me, synchronicities on many levels began happening. The universe conspired.
Did I go because I was expecting a spiritual experience? No. I went because I had a yearning to get to that place on Earth. Did I study the country or have any expectations? No, I didn’t even know how far Pokhara was from Kathmandu. I trusted my intuition.
I landed in Kathmandu, then travelled to Pokhara.
I could not tell if the deep contentment I felt was due to the place – the serene lake of Pokhara is surrounded by the snowy mountains of Annapurna range, due to my daily hours of “pranayama” (control of breath), meditation or the answers I was getting to many of my questions in my interactions with my master, my philosophy and the Darshanam teachers.
It was a journey within, and the guidance from my mentors created the space for a major shift in me.
In retrospect, my journey began many years ago, when I was still a student in my country of birth, Bulgaria. I have always yearned for spiritual awareness. The trip to Nepal was the culmination of that spiritual journey.
Being in Nepal, away from our consumerism-driven, competitive Western world, certainly allowed for faster access to my core. Also, interacting with people who have been on their own spiritual path for many years, feeling their serenity and energy, brought me a feeling of deep comfort. It is a feeling of detached contentment, of awareness and awakening.
As it happened, I was in Nepal at the time of the devastating earthquake there. I now understand why I ended up there at the time.
When I came back, I started helping to raise funds to bring over teachers for yoga workshops and retreats. I would like to set the space for as many people as I can to grow in their way.
Duncan Guy
Journalist who cycled the Roof of Africa
The renowned Camino de Santiago (Way of St James) has always been high on my bucket list and always will be. I even started walks in Kensington, Joburg, to my kids’ school, St James, and dubbed these walks “Joburg’s Santiago Pilgrimage”.
Unable to go to Spain, I settled for a bike ride across Lesotho to take a bundle of books from our St James school to another St James on the Roof of Africa, that part of the world being a passion I shared with my dad.
Each night after stoic cycling, I would hit the sack with my routine pre-nodding-off nightmare. “Did it really happen? Did it really b***** well happen? Is it actually true?”
Had Dad really become the latest crime statistic when I last saw his body on that stoep?
I thought of him a lot as I pedalled the steep inclines. The Moteng Pass loomed up ahead. Challenge of challenges. Upon reaching the top, I said “victory” to myself through the puffs and sweat.
Saying the word was like pressing a button that brought me into a new realm. I blanked out completely and relived carrying Dad’s coffin out of the church at his funeral. I heard the word again in the line “Onward to the VICTORY thy o’er death has won” – part of the hymn, Thine Be The Glory.
I emerged from my trance, still pushing my bicycle, tears having mixed with the sweat dripping down to my lips. Then I looked across to the endless emptiness of Lesotho’s mountains dad so loved. I screamed and I swore about crime in South Africa.
Then I pulled myself together and pedalled on and never since have I had that pre-nodding-off nightmare. Mission accomplished on my Pilgrimage to St James, although that wasn’t exactly the mission I’d had in mind.
Janine Hills
Communications specialist who walked the 800km Camino de Santiago
In 1999, I was part of a dynamic team launching eBucks.com, an e-commerce initiative for the FirstRand Group, when I got hijacked for the second time.
I remember reading a book called The Camino: A Journey of the Spirit, by Shirley MacLaine, over the weekend at my home in Melville, Joburg. I walked into the office and put it on the desk of Michael Jordaan, my then boss, and asked if I could please take off 36 days to complete The Camino.
The very next morning, having read the book, he walked in and said he fully understood. I booked an Air France flight direct to Paris and a train ticket down the coast of France to the Pyrénées to the little town of St-Jean-Pied-de-Port.
With my backpack weighing over 25kg, I confidently embarked on a journey of a lifetime. After an exhausting first 25km that day, I emptied my backpack to 6kg at the first Refugio, a monastery in the middle of the Pyrénées, with strict nuns who put us to bed very early.
That backpack was emptied out and some very helpful pilgrims assisted me with what I really needed on the trip.
The journey was filled with highlights and low lights, marriage proposals and group dynamics, new friends and old. It was one of the most liberating 32 days of my life, being able to follow in the footsteps of the great saints who had walked this healing walk for centuries.
There is no doubt when you’re in a meditative walk for kilometre after kilometre in silence with only yourself, the aches and pains of your body and the nature surrounding you, that you are able to tap into the universe that surrounds you.
Physically, it’s an internal battle of how you are going to make the next 20 to 25km each day. Do you keep up with the group? Do you keep up or compete with another pilgrim, or do you manage your own pace, and complete things in your own way and in your own time?
Having never been terribly physically fit, and having always struggled with my health as a child growing up, this was an important personal growth step of knowing my inner strength.
There was many a day that walking the Camino I had no less than 10 blisters. The art of learning to pop and sew the blister, which enabled me to walk another 25km, became an imperative.
The friends along the way, the Spanish laughter, the way people opened their homes to us was something I wasn’t used to. Losing 10kg, and completing the full Camino which only 10 percent of pilgrims complete in a lifetime, helped me to define my inner confidence and gave me the knowing I had yearned for for many years.
Ebrahim Mia
School teacher who went on Hajj to Mecca this year
I went on Hajj, the Muslim’s annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, for the first time this year. I wanted to go for the whole six weeks, but I could get time off work and commitments for four weeks. It’s coming up to my 50th birthday and I felt a need to find my spiritual focus, to break away from the materialism and money motivation that surrounds us.
The flight was scheduled for August 31, but it was delayed due to technical problems and we were accommodated at the Michelangelo Hotel that night. A day later, the same thing happened, and we ended up only taking off on September 2. I looked at this as a spiritual testing.
Eventually we got to Medina. You are supposed to pray 40 times in the Prophet’s Mosque over nine days but we only had six days. That was another test.
Yet in despair, God shows you a sign. In Medina, my spine was giving me pain. I went to the roof of the mosque, and in the heat I was wondering how I’d survive for the two hours of praying. Then a guy speaking Arabic came over to me, bringing me a bottle of cold water and a chair. How did he know I was in pain?
Then, on the road to Mecca began one of the most frightful journeys of my life. We had decided to take a taxi and got caught in a sandstorm. Animals and gallon drums were flying around in the dust. I was afraid we wouldn’t get there at all.
In Mecca, the Sacred Mosque can cater for more than a million worshippers. I was actually among them when a crane was struck by lightning (it crashed through the east side of the mosque, killing 107, on September 11).
Still, I prayed, and it went well, even in the 48 to 49°C temperatures. When you focus on what you need to do, it is mind over matter, and it’s amazing what you can achieve.
This incredible pilgrimage, the most eventful in 25 years apparently, put me on such a spiritual high that when I came back, I felt a sense of despair.
But it made me realise that our purpose here is to serve humanity, and God. We are so privileged to live here, and I now have a much deeper understanding of that and what I need to do.
Helen Grange, The Star