HOWDY PILGRIMS...
IF YOU enjoyed the two previous series of BBC2 travelogue Pilgrimage, you’ll love the third.
Hot on the heels of their famous predecessors, who journeyed to Santiago and Rome, seven new celebrities are set to embark on their own journey of discovery – this time to Istanbul.
Taking part is journalist Adrian Chiles, a converted Catholic; former politician Edwina Currie, a lapsed Jew; Olympian Fatima Whitbread, a Christian; broadcaster Mim Shaikh and TV presenter Amar Latif, both Muslims; plus two confirmed atheists: comedian Dom Joly and actress Pauline McLynn.
The group will spend just over two weeks living as simple pilgrims following an ancient 1,000km military route, which has been transformed into a modernday path of peace.
Starting in Serbia’s capital city Belgrade, they will travel through Bulgaria and the mountainous Balkans, before crossing the border into Turkey, with their goal of reaching Istanbul and the Suleymaniye Mosque.
Did the experience change their beliefs? We find out.
EDWINA CURRIE, 73
IT’S an area of the world I’d never been to; I knew it was beautiful, but it was stunning.
I learned that there’s a heck of a lot of change going on in that part of the world that we’re not aware of. We saw areas where a lot of effort is being made to raise standards, giving hope; and we learned some places, which are still very cut off like Serbia, are still in a mindset that we, perhaps, wouldn’t find very comfortable.
PAULINE McLYNN, 57
was cemented the fact that I really have no time for organised religion of any sort. We visited an awful lot of places where the most extraordinary atrocities occurred, and it’s all in the name, really, of religion.
Certainly the ones that we saw. I was glad to be an atheist at the end of it all.
AMAR LATIF, 45
FOR the last 15 years, since I’ve become blind, I’ve travelled the world. I went on this adventure because in our day-to-day lives we’re working hard, and religion is just pushed to one side.
Apart from the historical stuff Pauline and Edwina alluded to, I felt I was experiencing such joy from most of the places we went to. There was just a feeling of contentment.
It made me realise that religion does bring people
DOM JOLY, 52
EVERYONE we met along the way was lovely and friendly, and yet you knew the things that they believed in are used to divide.
That’s my problem with religion. I think it’s just the extraordinary contrast between the friendliness of the people but knowing that there’s this really deep-set division underneath it.
MIM SHAIKH, 28
I’VE got this curiosity about me of just wanting to learn about other cultures, religions and people, primarily, because I feel that’s how I’m able to learn in the best way.
I felt like, as a Muslim who practises and who is devout, that I have a duty to show, ‘Look we’re not all fundamentalists, we’re not all extremists, we’re good human beings’.
I realised that all of us, no matter what our religions are, our ethnicity, our class, our gender, what jobs we have, there’s more common in us than there is different.
ADRIAN CHILES, 52
I JUST thought, ‘Well, I do really like talking about faith’ and I think there’s a misconception that people who come on and talk about faith get hammered for it.
I’m quite relaxed talking about faith and I thought there would be interesting things to learn and discussions to have.
I found it spiritually dispiriting, if I can put it like that. Every place we
FATIMA WHITBREAD, 59
I AM Christian; however, I am not devout. I believe in God and a higher power.
(This) was a spiritual and eye-opening experience, both religiously and culturally.
Experiencing a religious journey first hand has deepened my faith (but) I feel that it hasn’t changed me as such, it’s just increased my understanding of other people’s faith and increased my knowledge.