I just returned from India, and part of the trip included visits to beautiful South Indian Hindu temples, which were very crowded because we unknowingly arrived during the local pilgrimage season. Groups of men lined every dusty road, rested in fields, dodged through city traffic and eventually jammed the temple grounds with devotion.
They were dressed simply and minimally, carried little and lived austerely, and traveled in clusters by friendship, family, community or chance-met camaraderie. They had left their homes and embarked on foot to seek epiphany, transformation, redemption or perhaps just an adventurous escape from the daily grind.
Religious pilgrimage is as common in modern India as it was in Medieval Europe, when it inspired Geoffrey Chaucer’s classic The Canterbury Tales. But you don’t have to go back in time or to exotic lands for a pilgrimage experience. If you think of a “pilgrimage” as a journey of personal or spiritual significance, you can become a pilgrim right now in America.
For example, the popular Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed describes a kind of pilgrimage. In the wake of her mother’s death and a failed marriage, a damaged young woman decides to hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone and without training, and ultimately heals herself.
In the Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, author Annie Dillard describes a metaphysical journey through a dramatic year in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley, exploring nature and its seasons near her home while recording both her scientific observations and her thoughts on solitude, nature and religious faith.
The international award-winning novelist Paulo Coelho has written lyrically about pilgrimage, too. He is best known for The Alchemist–about an Andalusian shepherd boy whose dream of treasure sends him on a quest to the Egyptian desert–but before he wrote that fictional tale, Coelho penned The Pilgrimage about his own spiritual quest along the famed pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago, still the most popular long-distance trail in Europe.
Inspired to follow in his footsteps? Check out the many recent pilgrim accounts or guides: https://www.amazon.com/Pilgrimage-Road-Santiago-Complete-Cultural/dp/0312254164
ABOUT KATHERINE SHARMA
Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.
It seems appropriate to celebrate the romantic holiday with some romantic-mystery/mystery-romance genre mating. Maybe start by revisiting the popular “gothics” of my teen reading years: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart, Dragonwyck by Anya Seton and Wings of the Falcon by Barbara Michaels.
For more modern fare, try You Belong to Me by Karen Rose, in which a sexy widower cop and a troubled medical examiner find love while investigating a serial killer, or Heartbreaker by Julia Garwood as against-the-odds romance blossoms amid another serial murder case.
Or, embrace Stephanie Plum, the protagonist of Janet Evanovich’s popular series, for her debut with One for the Money, in which Stephanie takes a job hunting bail jumpers for a quick buck and is soon on the trail of a hot ex-beau with a price on his head while getting training from the studly “Ranger.”
All of these are sturdy romantic mystery entries, but, if you’re looking for more literary prose, read the Booker Prize-winning best-seller Possession by A.S. Byatt. Described as a “novel of wit and romance, an intellectual mystery, and a triumphant love story,” the tale is built around a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets through their letters, journals, and poems, and tracking the dead poets’ movements from London to Yorkshire, with seances and fairy lore along the way.
She was beautiful, impulsive, carefree, and determined to make a name for herself. Zelda Fitzgerald, the subject of a new Amazon series, was the iconic woman of the 1920s Jazz Age and the inspiration for many of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald’s female characters. Her reputation as a party girl undermined her talent and her intelligence, and her complicated, self-destructive relationship with her husband was the love story of the era.
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For those who like dark and disturbing, there’s The Crow Girl, a tale originally published as three separate volumes in Sweden, by Erik Axl Sund (nom de plume of a writing duo). Police detective Jeanette Kihlberg and psychologist Sofia Zetterlund are trying to crack the case of the sadistic Crow Girl, who is capturing and torturing children around the city of Stockholm and who seems to have a strange connection to a mental patient that Zetterlund is treating.
In neighboring Norway, Gunnar Staalesen offers Where Roses Never Die, the 19th in a series whose private detective character Varg Veum is actually honored by a statue in the city of Bergen, where he fictionally operates. Now Veum, suffering from alcoholism and haunted by past failures, is seeking redemption by helping a mother find out what happened to her three-year-old daughter, who disappeared nearly 25 years earlier, so the statute of limitations on justice is about to run out.
Also from Norway is The Bird Tribunal by Agnes Ravatn, a mystery with an isolated, wild setting and Gothic overtones. Allis Hagtorn answers an ad for a caregiver to Sigurd Bagge, a surly and secretive character who seems more in need of companionship than care. As Allis timidly sets out to impress him, she also becomes curious about what happened to his wife–leading to rising dread with hints of the supernatural.
Let’s not forget about Finland. In Dark As My Heart, author Antti Tuomainen’s protagonist Aleksi Kivi is a 33-year-old man obsessed by the disappearance of his mother two decades earlier when she went out on a date and never returned. So he manages to get a job working on the estate of Henrik Saarinen, a wealthy man his mother had dated, and gains his trust. But the nearer he gets to the truth, the closer he gets to losing sane perspective.
Simple to prepare, light and refreshing, pomegranate champagne cocktails only require three ingredients – semisweet champagne, pomegranate cordial/syrup and pomegranate seeds. Paired with homemade bruschetta that is smeared thick with cream cheese and some roasted tomatoes, this finger-food feast is sure to get his appetite going. Be sure to toast the bruschetta in a pan with some olive oil before layering on your chosen toppings. Perhaps you could lay out two or three toppings and encourage him to make up a slice for you? The opportunities to make romantic advances and endless!
Light enough to leave you feeling comfortable yet satisfied, this idea for a lemon and roast tuna carpaccio is ideal for an evening when you want to impress. Search for recipes that are simple enough to prepare at home, and be sure that your chosen cut of fish is finely sliced before you even leave the grocery store. You can prepare and plate this course before you start to get ready, popping it in the fridge to ensure that it remains fresh.
Chocolate covered strawberries – the ultimate romantic dessert which you can either buy or prepare at home. If you do choose to prepare these babies in your own kitchen, be sure to do so the day of your dinner date to avoid the chocolate getting too tough and the strawberries from going soggy. Whip up a small dish of vanilla cream and you’ve got yourself the perfect gateway to absolute delight!
Make a scrapbook.
Finally make that phone call to an old friend.