It is holiday-time, schools have begun to close and parents are thinking of where to take their children for their holidays. In the old days, those who lived in the city went to their ancestral homes to meet the family and introduce their children to members of the clan. Today there are 200 million middle-class Indians who have the money to travel. We may not have noticed, but a sea-change is happening.

The tourist and the pilgrim are opposites in many ways. In India we have an ancient tradition of pilgrimage and travel to holy places, and you can still see pilgrims treading the ground respectfully as they make their long journey across the country to their private destination. India is a land of holy places for every religion, faith and community. Holiness goes back beyond the reach of time and history, and some mythological stories, like the birth of the Ganga and the presence of Shiva in Varanasi, still draw millions of seekers. The pilgrim is a seeker, one who desires darshan and wishes to experience the spiritual.

But the motive of the tourist and of those on holiday are very different; the tourist pursues fun, pleasure, relaxation, sun and sand.

Make a wish

Some pilgrims seek a boon or a wish and travel to temples and churches. Others go to Fatehpur Sikri to the tomb of Salim Chisti to tie a thread and pray that the saint will grant a child, as he had done emperor Akbar. Some go on pilgrimage to give thanks for a wish fulfilled. Others make the strenuous journey to temples and shrines high in the mountains or by a sacred river to seek freedom from past misdeeds and purification of sins. Others just go on a pilgrimage because everyone else in the family is going.

While a holiday is a time to do things in excess, the Indian family’s favourite entertainment is shopping and eating. It’s a break from work, to do things not done at home, like wild and amazing adventure sports and visits to water parks.

There are also pilgrimages to commemorate the rites of passage. Certain rituals related to the life-cycle of a human are celebrated, like the birth of a child. In a country where infant mortality is still very high, when a child survives the ordeals of the first 5 years of life then one must give thanks and offer its hair to the gods. There is a wonderful sight in Tirupathi in Andhra Pradesh, where through one door of a building people go in with heads of hair and come out from another as devotees with their heads clean-shaven. One of the most important reasons for pilgrimages is to perform the last rites for a loved one at holy sites, or to celebrate a festival or the Urs of a saint.

Country on the move

Like everyone else, we all look forward to a good holiday and the change so that we can come back more exhausted, fatter and heavier than when we started. A pilgrimage could take years, months or just a few days. Seasons and festivals often dictate the pilgrim’s march to the final destination and search for truth. For pilgrims, each step of the way is sacred, they have enormous respect for their destination, for them the place they are to visit holds meaning, is held in highest esteem and hence they wish that it will last forever.

For visitors, the time slot is, by definition, short. They may not have a well-defined respect for the site nor is the preservation of it their concern. They do not necessarily hold the place they are visiting with a sense of awe and wonder, places that will help them become better, gentler people. Perhaps we can learn to traverse the earth gently like pilgrims, respectful of every step, vowing not to harm or defile holiday destinations that we are privileged to visit. One thing that both pilgrims and visitors feel is the lack of facilities, adequate toilets, safety norms, cleanliness and helpful information on what to see and how to see them. We are a country on the move now, and its time to address the question of how best we can save those places that draw such crowds, year after year.