To leave home and travel toward the sacred is one of the oldest human impulses — Hajj to Mecca, the Camino de Santiago, the Hindu yatra to Varanasi, the Lakota vision quest, the Buddhist circumambulation of Mount Kailash. Pilgrimage is physical prayer: the body placed in motion, the ordinary life suspended, the traveler arriving not just at a place but at a new understanding of who they are. Every tradition that has taken the body seriously has also taken pilgrimage seriously.
Rumi