Pilgrim's India

KABIR TURNS ROUND, IT’s HARD TO SEE—IS THE HOLY PLACE BIGGER, OR THE DEVOTEE? More people have embarked on a quest for the sacred in India than anywhere else. An exceptionally rich religious tradition and an abundance of minor and major pilgrim sites have given seekers ample motivation to pack their bags and go on a search. PILGRIM’S INDIA is about all journeys impelled by the idea of the sacred. It brings together essays and poems—from the Katha Upanishad, Fa-Hien, Basavanna and Kabir to Paul Brunton, Richard Lannoy, Amit Chaudhuri, Arun Kolatkar and others—about various aspects of trips undertaken in the name of God. Readers will encounter the watchful reserve of a British journalist in southern India, the vigorous prose of a contemporary Sikh pilgrim, a French author-adventurer's appraisal of the Ellora caves, a modern-day Zoroastrian’s reflections on Udvada and a woman's impression of what it means to be Muslim in India. Mystics, witnesses and wanderers write about the Supreme Being, about journeys and destinations, false starts, bottlenecks and blind alleys, about humour, rage and revelation—all of which make this anthology a deeply absorbing and idiosyncratic take on pilgrims and pilgrim trails in India.