You want travel to change you. Right? But then you come back home, and it’s back to your regular life, and the smells and sounds and memories and surprises drift away, and there you are, back the way you were. This spring, I spent nearly two months on a pilgrimage, visiting 88 temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku. I know, I keep going on about it. It was, I hope, life-changing. But how do you change a life? And why? I have good friends and interesting hobbies. I sing regularly. I live with a beloved man and dog. And yet I felt mild dread about going back home and having life be exactly like it was. What did I do this whole thing for, this two-month odyssey of tired feet and hard mattresses, if I was just going to end up back on the couch, scrolling on my phone? Here’s a list I started halfway through the trip and added to as I went along, trying to capture some of what made the experience so rich and good – a mix of suggestions for home and descriptions of pilgrim life: Walk a…
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