cover image Sacred Roads: Adventures from the Pilgrimage Trail

Sacred Roads: Adventures from the Pilgrimage Trail

Nicholas Shrady. HarperOne, $22 (268pp) ISBN 978-0-06-067112-9

A born-and-raised Catholic whose faith ""was, and remains, full of profound doubts,"" American travel writer Shrady describes the events of his sometimes harrowing journeys to six of the world's best-known religious destinations: the Catholic shrine to Mary at Medjugorje, Bosnia; the Hindu holy river Ganges; Buddhist sites in India and Nepal; the 500-mile medieval pilgrimage path to the tomb of St. Peter in Santiago de Compostela, Spain; the Jewish and Islamic holy sites of Jerusalem; and the Turkish tomb of the Sufi mystic Rumi. Taken together, the trips bring Shrady to conclude: ""The notion that God, or the Absolute, can be approached while journeying, I discovered, is all but universal."" Shrady unites incisive, often humorous writing (the wall of his ""soggy"" Medjugorje boarding-house room ""was decorated with a poster of the Virgin, and another with an image of Sylvester Stallone--a source of inspiration, no doubt"") with thoughts on the religious faiths he seeks to understand (""One may choose to become a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, or a shamanist, but one cannot become a Hindu.... That is why Hindus do not go about proselytizing""). Along the way, the author describes adventures that include being left out in the cold by Catholic priests; traveling the Ganges in a ""decrepit vessel of dubious seaworthiness""; being held hostage by bandits in India; and, finally, witnessing ""a clandestine Sema ceremony"" of Sufi dervishes whirling in ecstatic prayer. In this sincere narrative, Shrady wonderfully combines travelogues with spiritual ruminations. (June)