Editorial Reviews 
Amazon.com  
Nicholas Shrady's Sacred Roads: Adventures from the Pilgrimage Trail is the best kind of personal essay. Shrady's subject is determined by his own experience, but his perception of that experience always pays homage to the many men and women who have gone before him--and it paves the way for those who will follow. That particular strength is exceptionally well suited to a book about pilgrimage, because a pilgrim's movements are always at least as socially conditioned as they are individually elected. The driving question of Sacred Roads is this: how does the act of walking a pilgrim's path lead to spiritual insight? This Mississippi-River-size question is fed by smaller tributaries: Do danger and adventure make the rewards of pilgrimage greater? How should a pilgrim cope with obstacles in his or her path? Should obstacles be interpreted as providential or accidental? What do you do when a so-called holy man threatens your life? A skeptical Catholic, Shrady is blessed with faith and doubt in equal measure, which imbues his stories of pilgrimages to Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, and Hindu holy places with authentic suspense. To extract from this book a succinct lesson is impossible; to try would be an injustice. Suffice it to say that Shrady is an ideal companion--simultaneously erudite, easygoing, intense, and blissfully ignorant. And best of all, he's a tenacious guardian of the solitude he finds on the pilgrimage trail, so as to be more fully present to his fellow pilgrims and readers: 

I came to regard the conventional world from which I was at least temporarily removed as chaotic and aimless; the world of pilgrimage, by contrast, was, despite often precarious conditions, marked by a purity of focus. If I felt somehow blessed, it was because the pilgrimage brought me closest to Man's first condition.

Book Description  
How many of us have longed to travel the same roads that Jesus traveled? To walk in the footsteps of the Buddha? In Sacred Roads, Nicholas Shrady journeys to some of the most holy destinations in the world, and in his recollections we can see the beginnings of our own spiritual voyage. From Medjugorje, Bosnia, where pilgrims flock to the miraculous site of the Virgin Mary's appearance, to Konya, Turkey, where, since 1271, people have traveled to pay their respects at the tomb of the Sufi mystic Rumi, Shrady reveals the wonders of pilgrimage. What would it be like to walk the five hundred miles of venerated ground to Santiago de Compostela, through the countryside and rugged mountains of Spain, to the burial site of St. James? Or, how would it be to climb to the source of the Ganges, high in the Himalaya, and later drift down the sacred river by rowboat to the teeming holy city of Varanasi, where the dead are cremated alongside the river's banks? With vivid detail, incisive objectivity, and even unexpected humor, Nicholas Shrady discovers the paradoxes and the hidden truths of religion, and he shares with us the sublime epiphanies and the absurd dilemmas that await a modern-day pilgrim. 

Sacred Roads sends a clear message: If a pilgrimage beckons--walk on! The adventures and insights that await are certain to be worth the effort, and the journey itself will be life-changing. The sacred roads of the world offer an opportunity to reflect and rejoice--and it is in these moments that the jewels of the pilgrim's trail are uncovered: ". . . never had I previously felt so near to the Absolute as when I was bound to a sacred path--not in any church, confessional, or moment of solitary prayer." For, as any pilgrim knows, the real pilgrimage brings us to the true destination: our own sacred road. 

"The pilgrim's progress is both an interior journey, a spiritual exercise, and a physical journey toward an actual site imbued with a divine character. The condition of the pilgrim, in fact, comes remarkably close to that of the hero. By abandoning familiar, worldly surroundings, submitting [oneself] to physical hardship and sometimes considerable danger, and paying homage or doing penance at a holy site, pilgrims, like heroes, know that they will return from their odyssey in some way renewed, or at least inwardly changed." -- from Sacred Roads 

Synopsis  
Combining a thrilling travel narrative with the story of a profound spiritual journey, the author vividly chronicles his pilgrimages to six holy sites of the world's major religions. 

About the Author  
Nicholas Shrady's work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Travel & Leisure, Town & Country, Architectural Digest, Forbes, and many other publications. He was born and raised in Connecticut. He received his degree in philosophy from Georgetown University in 1981 and has lived in Barcelona, Spain, for the past fifteen years.