Tourism: a Sacred Journey? The Case of Ashram Tourism, India

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH 

Int. J. Tourism Res. 7, 161–171 (2005) 

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jtr.522 

Tourism: a Sacred Journey? The Case of 

Ashram Tourism, India 

Richard Sharpley* and Priya Sundaram 

University of Hull, Scarborough Campus, Filey Road, Scarborough YO11 3AZ, UK 

ABSTRACT 

Religious tourism — tourism that is 

motivated by faith or religious reasons — 

has been in evidence for centuries. In more 

recent times, however, it has been suggested 

that modern tourism has become the 

functional and symbolic equivalent of more 

traditional religious practices, such as 

festivals and pilgrimages. In other words, it 

is claimed by some that tourism is a sacred 

journey. To date, however, little work has 

been undertaken to explore this position; 

the purpose of this paper, therefore, is to 

contribute to this debate. Based on an 

exploratory study, it considers the 

motivations and experiences of Western 

tourists visiting the Sri Aurobindo Ashram 

and the nearby utopian township of 

Auroville in Pondicherry, south east India. 

It identifies two principal groups of visitors, 

namely ‘permanent tourists’ who have 

immersed themselves indefinitely in a 

spiritual ‘Other’, and temporary visitors. 

The latter are categorised into sub-groups 

which point to a variety of spiritual and 

non-spiritual motives. The paper concludes 

that there is a continuum of spirituality 

inherent in tourism, though this is related to 

tourists’ experience rather than initial 

motivation. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & 

Sons, Ltd. 

Received 12 October 2004; Accepted 3 January 2005 

*Correspondence to: Richard Sharpley, University of Hull, 

Scarborough Campus, Filey Road, Scarborough, North 

Yorkshire YO11 3AZ, UK. 

E-mail: R.Sharpley@hull.ac.uk 

Keywords: religious tourism; tourism as 

religion; pilgrimage; ashram tourism. 

Anyone seeking answers to questions of 

life or other personal issues which trouble 

one’s self can do so in India ...The quest 

for discovering one’s own God ends, and 

the journey towards the realisation of the 

self begins with a visit to timeless, spiritual 

India. (www.bestindianhotels.com 

2003). 

INTRODUCTION 

It has long been recognised that a variable 

relationship exists between the institutions 

of religion and tourism. On the one hand, 

religious tourism may be identified as a specific 

type of tourism ‘whose participants are 

motivated either in part or exclusively for religious 

reasons’ (Rinschede, 1992). Probably one 

of the oldest forms of tourism, with human 

migration being linked to religion from earliest 

times (Sigaux, 1966; Vukonić, 1996), this is 

manifested in a diversity of touristic-religious 

activity, from long-term journeys (i.e. pilgrimage) 

to and/or stays at religious centres to 

short-term visits to religious centres or sites for 

the purpose of religious celebration, contemplation 

or meeting. In the former case, the 

entire trip may be religious in purpose, 

whereas in the latter, visits to religious sites 

may be but one element of a multifunctional 

trip. 

On the other hand, tourism may be considered 

as religion. In other words, in modern, 

secular societies, not only has free (i.e. discretionary 

or non-work) time in general become 

‘a space for the contemplative and the creative, 

a unity of thought and action’ (Vukonić, 1996, 

p. 8), an opportunity for human beings to 

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

162 R. Sharpley and P. Sundaram 

recognise and cultivate their spiritual needs, 

but also tourism, as a particular use of such 

free time, has come to be seen by some as a 

spiritual or sacred journey. As Graburn (1989, 

p. 22) observes, ‘tourism . . . is functionally and 

symbolically equivalent to other institutions 

that humans use to embellish and add 

meaning to their lives’; it may be understood 

either as a regular secular ritual (the annual 

vacation) that acts as a counterpoint to everyday 

life and work or as a more specific rite of 

passage or ‘personal transition’ (Nash, 1996) 

undertaken at particular junctions in peoples’ 

lives. In either case, however, it can be argued 

that tourism is ‘the modern equivalent . . . of 

festivals and pilgrimages found in more traditional, 

God-fearing societies’ (Graburn, 2001, 

p. 43; see also Graburn, 1983). 

Thus, the varying relationship between 

tourism and religion may be conceptualised as 

a continuum based upon the degree of intensity 

of religious motivation inherent in what 

Smith (1992a) refers to as the ‘quest in guest’. 

At one extreme lies sacred pilgrimage, a 

journey driven by faith, religion and spiritual 

fulfilment; at the other extreme lies the secular 

tourist who may seek to satisfy some personal 

or spiritual need through tourism. Between 

these two points can be found different 

forms/intensities of religious tourism motivated 

to a greater or lesser extent by religious 

or, conversely, cultural or knowledge-based 

needs. As Smith (1992a) puts it, some religious 

tourists may be ‘more pilgrim than tourist’, 

whereas others may be ‘more tourist than 

pilgrim’. 

However, despite this recognition of the link 

between tourism and religion, particularly in a 

historical context, relatively little attention has 

been paid to the subject within the tourism literature. 

More specifically, although the existence 

of what Vukonić (1996) refers to as ‘homo 

turisticus religiosus’, or the religious tourist, is 

widely accepted and discussed to some extent 

in the literature in the context of both consumption 

(Vukonić, 1996; see also Smith, 

1992b; Franklin, 2003) and supply (Shackley, 

2001), few if any attempts have been made to 

explore the cultural meaning of tourism as a 

modern spiritual experience. That is, although 

it has been argued by some that contemporary 

tourism, as a phenomenon of modern, secular 

societies, fulfils some spiritual need within 

tourists, there exists little evidence to support 

this claim. The purpose of this paper, therefore, 

is to begin to address this gap in the literature. 

Focusing on tourism to India, a destination 

that, since the 1960s, has come to epitomise the 

spiritual touristic experience (Mehta, 1990; 

Brown, 1998; Sutcliffe, 1998), it considers the 

outcomes of an exploratory study into the 

motivations of Western visitors to a specific 

religious site, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in the 

southeast of the country. In so doing, it challenges 

some of the assumptions regarding the 

spiritual nature of the modern tourist experience, 

while highlighting the need for greater 

knowledge and understanding of the subject. 

The first task, however, is to review briefly the 

theoretical debate surrounding the concept of 

tourism as a sacred journey or spiritual experience 

as a framework for the subsequent 

discussion. 

TOURISM: A SACRED JOURNEY? 

Spirituality, according to Brown (1998, p. 1), 

‘has become a kind of buzz-word of the age 

. . . an all-purpose word, but one that describes 

what is felt to be missing rather than specifying 

what is hoped to be found . . . The spiritual 

search ...has become a dominant feature of 

late twentieth-century life: a symptom of collective 

uncertainty’. Similarly, but in the specific 

context of tourism, MacCannell (1973) 

suggests that, as a response to the perceived 

inauthenticity of modern societies, tourists 

have become secular pilgrims searching for the 

authentic: ‘sightseeing is a kind of collective 

striving for a transcedence of the modern totality, 

a way of attempting to overcome the discontinuity 

of modernity (MacCannell, 1989, p. 

13). In other words, the alleged anomic condition 

of modern societies has resulted in a 

search for spiritual meaning and, as a modern 

form of mass migration, tourism is seen as a 

popular and particularly effective vehicle for 

undertaking that search. As a consequence, it 

is suggested by some that tourism is a modernday 

sacred journey, the contemporary and 

functional equivalent of the traditional 

pilgrimage. 

According to Smith (1992a), tourism and pilgrimage 

are superficially similar in that both 

Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Tourism Res. 7, 161–171 (2005)

Tourism: a sacred journey? 163 

tourists and pilgrims share the same fundamental 

requirements to undertake their 

journey, namely, free (leisure) time, sufficient 

financial resources and social sanction — in 

the latter case, social ‘approval’ is a powerful 

force in determining the appropriate use of 

free time. At the same time, observed tourist 

behaviour is analogous to a form of pilgrimage; 

that is, many tourist sights or attractions 

are accorded the status of a religious icon or 

symbol. As Urry (1990, p. 12) observes, they 

have to be seen or gazed upon; they are 

‘famous for being famous ...[and] ...entail a 

kind of pilgrimage to a sacred centre, which is 

often a capital or major city’. However, a distinction 

between tourism and pilgrimage may 

be identified within the meaning or personal 

belief attached to each activity. That is, pilgrimage 

may be considered the purposeful, 

serious, legitimate or pious pursuit of spiritual 

fulfilment, whereas tourism, by comparison, 

may be described as the search for hedonistic, 

frivolous and superficial wish-fulfilment 

(Pfaffenberger, 1983). Nevertheless, if these 

labels are stripped away, it becomes apparent 

that the individual experience of tourism and 

pilgrimage may not be so distinct. As Pfaffenberger 

(1983) argues, ‘the difference between 

tourism and pilgrimage lies not so much in any 

radical phenomenological difference between 

them . . . but rather in the culturally-supplied 

language of symbols in which travellers are 

obliged to express the peregrinations.’ 

A number of commentators have linked the 

notion of tourism as a spiritual or sacred 

journey with Turners’ widely cited work on 

ritual processes, including pilgrimage (Turner 

and Turner, 1978). According to them, participation 

in transitional rituals or pilgrimage 

involves a three-stage process. Initially, people 

go through the separation stage, where they 

become freed or distanced from the ordinary, 

routine or ‘profane’ (Graburn, 1989). This is 

followed by the phase of ‘liminality’, or entry 

into a ‘sacred’ state of anti-structure in which 

the structure and order of normal life dissolve, 

everyday obligations cease to exist and new 

forms of relationships are created based upon 

a levelling of statuses. This condition, referred 

to as ‘communitas’ by Turner and Turner 

(1978), ‘produces a special feeling of excitement 

and close bonding between participants’ 

(Graburn, 2001, p. 47); the structured behaviour 

of everyday life is replaced by liberated 

and spontaneous activities that may not be 

socially sanctioned within the normal, home 

environment. For tourists, liminality is experienced 

in places ‘on the margin’ (Shields, 1990) 

and may be expressed in a variety of ways 

(Lett, 1983; Passariello, 1983). Finally, of 

course, people must progress through the 

process of re-integration as they return to the 

structured, everyday existence of their home 

society — importantly, for those having experienced 

some form of transitional ritual, this 

reintegration is frequently at a changed or 

higher status. 

There are evident links between tourism and 

pilgrimage in terms of both the journey and the 

experience of communitas; indeed, Turner and 

Turner famously claim that ‘a tourist is half a 

pilgrim, if a pilgrim is half a tourist’ (1978, 

p. 20), although they distinguish between the 

obligatory nature of many traditional rituals 

and the voluntary nature of tourism. Equally, 

there is little doubt that some ‘tourist encounters 

can be just as compelling [as pilgrimage] 

and almost spiritual in personal meaning’ 

(Smith, 1992a). Nevertheless, just as few would 

accept Boorstin’s (1964) position that the 

modern tourist is satisfied with pseudo-events, 

so too would few agree with MacCannell’s 

(1989) assertion that all tourists are modern pilgrims 

on an (albeit doomed) search for authenticity. 

That is, tourists seek to satisfy an 

enormous variety of personal or spiritual 

needs and, therefore, to classify all tourism as 

a response to modernity’s collective uncertainties 

and, hence, a search for spiritual reward 

may be misleading. Indeed, it is unlikely that 

all tourists sense anomie to the same degree. 

Thus, Cohen’s (1979) ‘existential tourist’ may 

seek the ‘centre out there’ and, hence, undertake 

an individual ‘pilgrimage’ in search of 

spiritual fulfilment whereas ‘recreational 

tourists’ may, by definition, seek simply to 

relax and re-create. 

Moreover, the relationship between the 

journey and spiritual experiences remains 

fuzzy; for example, visits to ‘worship’ at the 

homes or graves of deceased celebrities, often 

referred to as ‘dark tourism’ (Lennon and 

Foley, 2000; Sharpley, 2003), is akin to traditional 

pilgrimage whereas many who walk the 



Santiago de Compostella pilgrimage route 

may do so only for the physical challenge 

(although this in itself may be interpreted as 

providing contemporary spiritual reward). 

Equally, momentary experiences within otherwise 

mundane journeys may be spiritually 

uplifting. As de Botton (2003) notes, the link 

between sublimity and religion has long been 

explicit; ‘it is no coincidence that the Western 

attraction to sublime landscapes developed at 

precisely the moment when traditional beliefs 

in God began to wane’ (de Botton, 2003, p. 171) 

Thus, momentary gazing upon particular 

landscapes or views may satisfy the individual’s 

need for spiritual refreshment. 

To summarise this section, then, tourism and 

pilgrimage share many features — the requirements 

of free time, social sanction and income, 

as well as the process of transfer from ordinary/profane 

to non-ordinary/sacred time 

and place. It is, therefore, possible to refer to 

tourism generically as a sacred journey, particularly 

as vacations may have significant personal 

meaning. Nevertheless, distinctions 

remain in the context of quest, between the 

‘true’ pilgrim following his or her faith and the 

secular pilgrim seeking meaning or knowledge. 

Thus, as Smith (1992a) suggests, pilgrimage 

and tourism may be conceptualised as 

‘two parallel, interchangeable lanes’ following 

different quests — the religious and the 

secular. Tourists may travel either lane or 

‘switch between them, depending on personal 

need or motivation’ (Smith, 1992a). However, 

as this paper now goes on to consider, even 

within destinational contexts where this lane 

switch may logically be assumed to occur (i.e. 

where tourism becomes primarily a spiritual 

journey), questions still remain over the nature 

of the individual quest and, hence, the 

meaning of the journey. 

THE STUDY — ‘ASHRAM TOURISM’ 

IN INDIA 

Given the lack of research into, or evidence to 

support, the concept of tourism as a sacred 

journey, the purpose of this study is to begin 

to address the gap in the literature by 

exploring the motivations of Western 

tourists in southern India. More specifically, 

it seeks to reveal the quest in Western visitors 

to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the associated 

town of Auroville, located near 

Pondicherry in southeast India. This site was 

selected as it is, for Western visitors, one of the 

most popular and well-known ashrams in the 

country. More generally, however, it is also an 

important religious site within a country that, 

arguably, epitomises spiritual touristic 

experiences. 

The context: India as a spiritual destination 

Tourism, particularly religious tourism, has a 

long history in India; ‘if travel and tourism are 

ways of enlightening the spirit ...they have 

been practised for centuries in India, whose 

peoples have long expressed a common sense 

of community in organized religion’ (Singh, 

2001, p. 138). Indeed, the practice of tirthayatra, 

or pilgrimage, has been an element of Indian 

social life since ancient times (Kamra, 1997; 

Gupta et al., 2002) and nowadays remains the 

mainstay of the domestic tourism industry — 

it is estimated that almost 95% of domestic 

travellers are religious tourists, and, overall, 

some 144 million domestic tourist trips were 

made in 1998 (Singh, 2001). 

In contrast, international tourism to India 

remains, in terms of volume, relatively 

insignificant. Modern tourism to the subcontinent 

dates back to the nineteenth century, primarily 

based on the colonial relationship with 

Britain (the British were also instrumental in 

developing hill stations, such as Simla, as 

retreats from the summer heat) and, by 1880, 

Thomas Cook enjoyed a virtual monopoly on 

all international tourism to the country. 

However, it was not until the mid-1940s that 

the colonial government began to recognise 

the economic potential of tourism and, in 1948, 

the newly independent government established 

the first body to promote tourism. Since 

then, and despite political upheavals, sporadic 

terrorist activity and health scares, international 

tourism has grown, albeit slowly. In 

1951, just 17000 international arrivals were 

recorded; by 2000, total arrivals had reached 

almost 2.65 million (Mintel, 2003). Of these, 

20% were from neighbouring Pakistan and 

Bangladesh, but Europe remains the biggest 

market, accounting for around 34% of all international 

arrivals. Not surprisingly, Britain pro- 



vides the largest proportion of European 

arrivals and almost 40% of these are travellers 

visiting friends and relatives (VFR). Thus, 

India’s share of global tourist arrivals is, at just 

0.4%, insignificant although, reflecting the 

dominance of VFR tourists, average length of 

stay is over 30 days. 

The relative weakness of India’s international 

tourism sector is, perhaps, surprising 

given the diverse attractions of the county, 

although most commentators point to haphazard 

tourism development policies and poor 

infrastructure as significant barriers. Nevertheless, 

since the 1960s, the country has 

become popular amongst Western visitors 

seeking some form of spiritual experience. Initially 

manifested in the ‘great overland movement 

from Europe . . . through Iran and 

Afghanistan . . . probably motivated by a 

search for “meaning” . . . from the Eastern 

gurus’ (Smith, 1992a), India’s reputation as a 

spiritual destination received a significant 

boost from visits by celebrities: 

Now it was the turn of the populists, the 

Beatles and the Rolling Stones to become 

the pacemakers for a faltering Western 

heart, and they achieved a more striking 

success ...The first wave of disciples was 

really top drawer. They were the nobles 

of the meritocracy and they were looking 

good. The women were models, the men 

were stars, and the massage was the 

message. When they came out of their 

spiritual retreats draped in homespun, 

they glowed with vegetarian good health 

( Mehta, 1990, p. 68). 

By the early 1980s, political upheaval in Iran 

and Afghanistan had signalled the demise of 

the overland trail but there is no doubt that 

India continues to attract large numbers of 

Western travellers seeking to experience spiritual 

India; indeed, there now exists a number 

of specialist tour operators to meet the needs 

of those seeking such an experience. For 

example, Sprit of India (see www.spirit-ofindia.com) 

offers ‘Yoga Journeys’ and a variety 

of pilgrimages to religious ceremonies and festivals, 

including the Kumbha Mela, the most 

important of all Hindu spiritual festivals that 

occurs every three years and, most famously, 

once every twelve years in the city of 

Allahabad. 

Of course, it is not only festivals that attract 

Western visitors — India offers a kaleidoscope 

of different religions and religious practices, 

evidenced in an enormous variety of shrines, 

temples and icons, and contemporary life in 

the country is manifestly spiritual: ‘you learn 

that, over there, the everyday person is the true 

holyman’ (Weis, 2003). Nevertheless, specific 

religious sites have long attracted western visitors; 

these include Dharamsala (a former 

British hill station to which the Dalai Lama fled 

from Tibet, and now a centre for the study of 

Tibetan culture) and Rishikesh, the town 

where the Beatles visited their guru in the 

1960s and now a place to study Hinduism. 

More generally, ashrams have also proved to 

be a magnet for Western visitors (for many, an 

essential element of a visit to India — see 

Sutcliffe (1998)). Perhaps the most famous of 

these is the home of the controversial Sai Baba 

in Puttaparthi, although the Sri Aurobindo 

Ashram, the focus for this study, is also a 

popular destination. 

The case study: Sri Aurobindo Ashram 

The term ‘ashram’ is derived from the Sanskrit 

word srama, meaning religious exercise, 

although it is now used generically to describe 

a spiritual retreat or college, usually established 

by a Hindu sage or ‘guru’ (a teacher or 

holy man). There are innumerable ashrams in 

India (and elsewehere) ranging from the 

homes of gurus to large, purpose built establishments 

with resident populations of 

disciples. 

The Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, 

a former French colony in the south-eastern 

state of Tamil Nadu, is unique inasmuch as it 

is directly associated with the founding and 

development of a nearby township, Auroville, 

the purpose of which is to realise the ideal of 

human unity. The Ashram itself was founded 

by Sri Aurobindo, who was born in Calcutta in 

1872. Educated at school and university 

in England, he returned to Baroda in India in 

1893 and worked in the local civil service 

before becoming a professor at Baroda College. 

Over a 13 year period he began to practice 

yoga as well as becoming involved in politics 



Figure 1. The Matrimandir, Auroville. 

before moving back to Calcutta in 1913. His 

political activities led to him being detained for 

a year before he travelled to Pondicherry in 

1910, where he devoted the next 40 years of his 

life to spiritual development through the practice 

of yoga. In 1920, he commenced a collaboration 

with the French-born Mirra Alfassa 

who, on first meeting Sri Aurobindo in 1914, 

had recognised him as the ‘master who had 

inwardly been guiding her spiritual development’ 

(Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2001). Later to 

become known simply as the ‘Mother’, she 

took charge of his disciples and formally established 

the Ashram when, in 1926, Sri 

Aurobindo went into seclusion. Since then, the 

Ashram has grown from a small community of 

some two dozen disciples to a large, diverse 

community of over 1200 people. The focus of 

community life is the Ashram, an interconnecting 

block of houses including those in 

which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother lived for 

most of their lives — their remains lie in the 

samadhi, or grave, in the central courtyard. 

However, ashramites live and work throughout 

the area, and within the ashram they are 

free to follow their sadhana, or spiritual discipline, 

to suit their individual needs. That is, 

there are no obligatory practices, rituals or 

compulsory meditations within the ashram 

and all visitors are welcome. 

Auroville, located 10km from Pondicherry, 

was the inspiration of the Mother. Her vision 

was that ‘there should be somewhere upon 

earth a place that no nation could claim as its 

sole property, a place where all human beings 

of goodwill, sincere in their aspirations, could 

live freely as citizens of the world, obeying one 

single authority, that of the supreme truth’ 

(Auroville, 2000, p. 2). In other words, her 

vision was a utopian community where people 

of different nationalities and diverse backgrounds 

could live together in a spirit of collaboration 

and mutual respect. Following its 

inauguration in 1968, work commenced on 

building the town, which comprises four zones 

surrounding a central Peace area, the centrepiece 

of which is the Matrimandir, a place for 

silent contemplation (Figure 1). Life in the 

town was based initially upon the principles of 

equality, common ownership, self-governance 

and self-sufficiency, although, following the 

death of the Mother in 1973, the original idealism 

rapidly dissipated. Currently, 1600 people 

live in Auroville (one-third are Indian and the 

remainder from other countries, with 33 

nationalities represented in total), far short of 

the hoped-for community of 50000. Nevertheless, 

the town, along with the Ashram, attracts 

significant numbers of visitors. 

THE RESEARCH 

As stated above, an exploratory study was 

undertaken into the motives of Western visi- 



tors to the Sri Aorobindo Ashram and 

Auroville. The principal purpose of this was to 

ascertain the extent to which tourists were 

seeking to satisfy a spiritual need through their 

experience of the destination or, indeed, if 

there were other, non-spiritual reasons for their 

visit. Semi-structured interviews were conducted 

with a number of international tourists 

in Pondicherry over a five day period. As interviewing 

visitors is not permitted within the 

Ashram itself, a number of respondents were 

selected randomly in local cafés in the vicinity 

of the Ashram, and a further sample was similarly 

selected within Auroville. Each respondent 

was asked a number of descriptive 

questions related to nationality, age, length of 

stay and so on, although the primary aim was 

to elicit, through open-ended questions, their 

expectations, perceptions and experiences of 

visiting the Ashram/Auroville; that is, to identify 

the degree of spiritual ‘quest in guest’. 

The sample 

Twenty-eight tourists were interviewed, 16 

within the vicinity of the Ashram and a further 

12 in Auroville. The respondents comprised a 

broad range of nationalities and ages; six were 

German, two were from the USA, five were 

Italian, one each came from Sri Lanka, Israel 

and Australia, three were British and the 

remaining nine were French. The number of 

French respondents was not, perhaps, surprising 

given the fact that, until the 1950s, 

Pondicherry was a French colony, and France 

and Germany are, after Britain, India’s major 

European tourist markets. More surprising, 

however, was the lack of British visitors. 

Sixteen respondents were male and 12 were 

female and, overall, their ages were spread 

between 20 and 50, although two respondents 

were over 70 years old. Interestingly, only four 

respondents were under 30 years of age — 

however, as will be discussed shortly, this can 

be explained in part by the characteristics of 

Auroville respondents, eight of whom could 

be categorised as ‘permanent tourists’. That is, 

they had been living in Auroville for a number 

of years (27 years in one case) and had no 

intention of returning to their countries of 

origin. Of the remaining respondents, expected 

length of stay in India varied between two 

weeks and seven months, although the majority 

were travelling in the country for between 

one and two months. 

Immediately, then, two distinct groups were 

identified within the sample, namely, the permanent 

tourists — the minority who had 

become Auroville residents — and the majority 

who were staying in Pondicherry temporarily 

as all or part of a visit to India. As is 

discussed in the following section, the research 

revealed significant distinctions between the 

two groups with respect to motives for visiting/staying 

in Pondicherry, and within the 

temporary visitors group, three subgroups 

were also identified: spiritual seekers, tourist 

trail followers, and yoga practitioners. 

ASHRAM TOURISTS — RESEARCH 

OUTCOMES 

For convenience, the following discussion is 

structured around the two groups and three 

subgroups described above. In each case, the 

expectations and experiences of tourists are 

explored within the context of tourism as a 

sacred journey. 

Permanent tourists 

Given the international character of the population 

of Auroville, the inclusion of a number 

of overseas residents, or ‘permanent tourists’, 

amongst those interviewed in the township 

was not unexpected. Similarly, given the 

vision/idealism that underpinned the founding 

and development of Auroville, it was, 

perhaps, likely that the motives of those choosing 

to live there would be predictable and 

would, to an extent, contrast with the motives 

of temporary visitors. 

Of the eight respondents who indicated that 

they were residents of Auroville, the most 

recent arrival had lived there for seven years, 

but the majority had been there for up to 

twenty years. All but one worked in the community 

in jobs ranging from martial arts 

classes and fitness instruction to managing the 

visitor centre, and all viewed their residence in 

the township as indefinite. All but one were 

over forty years of age. Four respondents 

claimed that they had been attracted originally 



by the spiritual culture of India in general, 

whereas two others had specifically come to 

live in Auroville. Interestingly, however, the 

respondents’ actual experience of living in the 

township contrasted with their initial expectations; 

that is, although originally seeking some 

benefit from the spirituality of India, for a 

number of respondents the attraction of 

Auroville had become the ‘otherness’ of the 

township compared with their home country 

and with the rest of India itself. 

For example, one respondent who had travelled 

to India on a ‘spiritual quest’ described 

his perception of India as ‘spiritual’, but his 

experience of Auroville as a dream. In 

Auroville ‘I’ve realised my dreams, to be free 

to be able to share my life with others ...[in] . 

. . brotherhood and unity. I am here because of 

Auroville. It is what it is because it’s in India, 

but it’s different — Auroville is not India’. Similarly, 

another respondent explained that living 

in Auroville and visiting the Ashram had 

resulted in her ‘being in touch with a living 

stream of life that is magical and beautiful, 

keeping myself open to life and developing a 

sense of my inner self’, but again, ‘living in 

Auroville one feels quite disconnected with 

[sic]the outside world’. Other respondents also 

emphasised the unity, equality, serenity, 

freedom and magic of Auroville and its contrast 

to India (we have become Aurovillians, 

not Indians), perhaps best summarised by 

another respondent who described India as 

‘chaotic, submissive, exhausting’ and 

Auroville as ‘home, adventure, magical’. 

For the permanent tourists, then, Auroville 

provides a form of spiritual existence, in a 

sense a permanent state of communitas that is 

defined, as is Alex Garland’s imaginary ‘Beach’ 

(1997), by its separateness (and its utopian 

ideals) from the outside world. Thus, it is not 

the journey but the destination that, for this 

group, is spiritual; rather than tourism as pilgrimage, 

involving a temporary state of antistructure 

(communitas) and return, it is travel, 

or escape, to the ‘Other’. 

Temporary visitors 

The majority of respondents (20) were temporary 

visitors to Pondicherry, staying either in 

the vicinity of the Ashram or in Auroville. All 

had visited the Sri Aurobindo Ashram but only 

eight had also visited or planned to visit other 

ashrams during their trip in India. For six 

respondents, visiting ashrams was the sole 

purpose of travelling to India although, as discussed 

shortly, their motivations varied. 

From the responses to these and other specific 

questions, including sources of information 

and knowledge about Pondicherry/the 

Ashram and the original reasons for visiting, 

along with open-ended questions with respect 

to respondents’ experiences of their visit, the 

differing motivations and degrees of spiritual 

quest can be identified within three subgroups 

of tourists. 

Spiritual seekers. The research suggests that, of 

those interviewed, only a relatively small proportion 

had purposefully visited the Ashram 

in search of, or in the expectation of, a spiritual 

experience. Indeed, just five respondents indicated 

that the motivation for their visit was 

‘spiritual’. Four of these described themselves 

as ‘devotees’ and, hence, previously aware of 

the Ashram and the teachings of Sri Aurobindo 

— one respondent from Italy, for example, had 

learned about the Ashram through a Sri 

Aurobindo group in his home country and 

said that he considered India not simply as a 

country or geographical space but as ‘Mother’, 

because of the way in which everything in 

India is in someway connected to religion. 

Another had been drawn to the Ashram 

because of her belief that ‘it is necessary ... 

[for people] . . . to follow the ideas of the 

Mother’, and a regular visitor, who described 

India as ‘divine’ and Indians as ‘spiritual, very 

occidental’, explained his continuing motivation 

to visit the Ashram as follows: 

. . . I feel the ‘force’ of the Ashram and the 

Mother. It has helped me when I’m back 

home; I’m finding my innerself. Everything 

has changed, my outlook has 

changed, I think with my heart. I have 

become a worshipper at a philosophical 

level. [At home] we have lost our Gods; 

researching for truth, we find evidence in 

science. This has changed everything. 

The fifth respondent in this group (about 50 

years old) had visited India as a (hippie) youth 



and was curious to see how much the country 

had changed. More specifically, he described 

India as ‘unique’ and ‘spiritual’, and himself as 

‘professionally fulfilled but spiritually 

curious’; his visit was, therefore, motivated by 

the potential for, but not in expectation of, a 

spiritual experience. In contrast, the ‘devotees’ 

had come to the Ashram to experience spiritual 

truth and meaning, implicitly to strengthen 

them in their everyday life back home. Thus, 

the ‘spiritual seekers’ identified in this research 

may be better considered as religious tourists 

or ‘true’ pilgrims. 

Tourist trail followers. Inevitably, many, if not 

the majority of tourists who visit 

religious/spiritual sites or attractions in 

general do not do so for spiritual reasons. Such 

sites may be architecturally important, culturally 

significant or, as previously noted, simply 

‘famous for being famous’ Urry (1990, p. 12); 

they may also be recommended in guidebooks. 

For example, the Eyewitness Guide to India 

(2002) describes the Sri Aurobino Ashram as a 

reputed yoga and meditation centre, and 

Lonely Planet’s India Travel Survival Kit — 

arguably the most widely used guide book by 

travellers in India (but, see Bhattacharyya, 

1997) — includes both Sri Aurobindo Ashram 

and Auroville as two of the five ‘must see’ spiritual 

centres in the country. Therefore, it is 

likely that a proportion of visitors to the 

Ashram are simply following the tourist trail. 

The research suggests that this is, to an 

extent, the case, although given the location of 

Pondicherry in the southeast of the country, 

the number of tourists visiting the Ashram 

simply ‘because it is there’ is likely to be more 

limited than in the more popular tourist 

regions of India. Almost half those (temporary 

visitors) interviewed indicated that they were 

visiting out of curiosity, although some of 

these also cited the desire to experience ashram 

life or to participate in specific activities, such 

as yoga, as reasons for visiting (see below). Visiting 

the Ashram was not considered a specific 

reason for travelling to India in the first place 

and the great majority of these ‘curious’ visitors 

had learned about the Ashram either 

through word of mouth (friends/fellow travellers) 

or from guide books. Interestingly, just 

three respondents suggested that they had fol- 

lowed the tourist trail; one American visitor 

stated ‘it is very relaxing to be here just spending 

time with fellow tourists. A friend of mine 

suggested it to me and I think I’ll do likewise 

and recommend it to my other friends’. Two 

others said that they had visited the Ashram 

simply because everyone in Pondicherry was 

talking about it. Another was there only 

because his brother lived in the area: ‘if 

Auroville was in another country, I would not 

have come’. 

The research suggests, therefore, that relatively 

few visit the Ashram/Auroville simply 

because it is on the tourist trail and one such 

respondent was left unimpressed by the experience: 

‘it doesn’t feel real; it’s just people 

living like [sic] they please. It’s like being in 

Disneyland, it’s not possible to live like this 

elsewhere’. Conversely, although not specifically 

drawn by a spiritual need, a number had 

visited out of cultural interest (to experience/gain 

knowledge of ashram life), and, as 

the next section reveals, some were attracted 

by the opportunity to participate in specific 

activities, particularly yoga. 

Yoga/meditation practitioners. As discussed 

earlier, the philosophy of the Ashram’s 

founder, Sri Aurobindo, was based upon spiritual 

development through yoga; at the same 

time, most guide books recommend the 

Ashram and Auroville for the practice of yoga 

and meditation. Therefore, it is unsurprising 

that six respondents specifically cited wanting 

to practice/learn yoga as a principal reason for 

their visits, and more than half the respondents 

indicated that the facilities they made most use 

of during their stay were the Matrimandir (the 

meditation hall) and Quiet Healing Centre 

where yoga is taught and practised. 

Those participating in yoga undoubtedly 

benefited from their experience of the Ashram. 

One respondent suggested that he had ‘experienced 

what yoga is; it helps to build up a 

healthy life’, and another stated that ‘the practice 

of yoga is impressing [sic]. It can help a 

person to have a relaxed and healthy life’. Similarly, 

another respondent who had learned 

yoga had found that, for her, it ‘helps to relax 

the mind’, and an American visitor, through 

practising yoga and mediation, had learned to 

‘search the innerself’. Thus, those who had 



visited for the specific purpose of learning and 

practising yoga had, to a lesser or greater 

extent, enjoyed some form of spiritual experience; 

indeed, one respondent from Germany 

explained that, having initially come to the 

Ashram out of curiosity and to learn yoga, he 

had ‘learned to look at life differently, that 

material things don’t matter too much’. He 

went on to claim that he had ‘become religious 

now, unlike before’. 

Summary 

In the context of this paper, there is a significant 

distinction between expectations and 

experience. That is, other than the ‘spiritual 

seekers’ referred to above, relatively few 

respondents had purposefully travelled to 

India and the Ashram to satisfy a spiritual 

need. Many were there out of curiosity, others 

to learn yoga and some simply because it was 

there, on the tourist trail. However, whereas 

some respondents recognised an artificiality 

about the Ashram experience for western travellers 

(perhaps reflecting the awareness of the 

so-called ‘post tourist’ — see Feifer (1985)), a 

number of others viewed their visit as a 

serendipitous spiritual experience, whether 

specifically through yoga/meditation or more 

generally from staying in the Ashram and 

Auroville. For example, for one ‘curious’ 

visitor, visiting the Ashram had made his ‘life 

richer, made me see things differently and 

more humble’, and another felt more ‘peaceful, 

appreciative and thankful’. In short, although 

many respondents had not been motivated by 

a spiritual need or quest, visiting the Ashram 

had provided some spiritual experience or 

fulfilment. 

CONCLUSIONS 

This paper set out to consider, through an 

exploratory study of Western tourists at the Sri 

Aurobindo Ashram in southern India, the 

degree of ‘quest in guest’; that is, its purpose 

was to begin to identify the extent to which visitors 

to a specific spiritual/religious destination 

were motivated by a search for spiritual 

fulfilment as suggested by those describing 

tourism as a sacred journey. Despite the 

limited nature of the research, a number of 

points have emerged. 

First, in some cases, the ‘quest in guest’ may 

be fulfilled. That is, the research revealed a 

number of tourists who had discovered in 

Auroville their spiritual home or ‘centre out 

there’ (Cohen, 1979). For some of these tourists, 

the satisfaction of their spiritual need meant 

that they had come to the end of their journey 

— as existential tourists, they had fully 

immersed themselves in the spiritual ‘Other’, 

becoming, in a sense, permanent tourists. For 

others, spiritual fulfilment is part of the 

journey. In other words, and second, the notion 

of the tourist as pilgrim (i.e. the religious 

tourist) has, to an extent, been verified; those 

who travelled to Pondicherry (the ‘devotees’ 

or ‘spiritual seekers’) with specific spiritual 

intentions return home stronger or more fulfilled. 

Their pilgrimage has been a success. 

Third, the research also suggests that the 

notion of a continuum of religious or spiritual 

intent as proposed by Smith (1992a) is valid. 

Although a variety of motives, from knowledge-driven 

secular curiosity to more purposeful 

need satisfaction, were identified in the 

research, it is evident that, albeit unintentionally, 

different intensities of spiritual fulfilment 

were experienced by visitors to the Ashram 

and Auroville. Importantly, however, this was 

not as an outcome of spiritual need-driven 

actions; for the most part, curiosity or the 

desire to learn resulted in spiritual benefits. 

Thus, it is apparent that, within particular destinational 

contexts, tourism can begin to take 

on the characteristics of a sacred journey 

although it may not be spiritually motivated. 

That is, tourism may not be functionally 

sacred, although its outcome may be. 

Finally, given the context of this research, 

some of the findings were, perhaps, predictable. 

There is a need, therefore, for further 

similar research in a variety of other destinational 

contexts. Nevertheless, this paper has 

gone some way to providing a foundation for 

that work. 

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