Pilgrims in Hindu Holy Land

About the Book:

There are sacred places all over India, but the northern district of Uttarkhand has long been regarded as the special dwelling-place of the gods. Here lies the sources of the Ganges at Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, and the source of the Jumna at Jamnotri. This mountainous district of unsurpassed grandeur has been well named ‘the Holy Land of the Hindus’.

Every year for centuries, thousands of Hindu pilgrims, seeking to free the soul from the bondage of its finite selfhood, have poured along the roads to Uttarkhand. On five occasions between 1923 and 1948, the Quaker missionary Geoffrey Waring Maw also joined the throng, in search of a deeper understanding of the people to whom his Christian message was addressed. His moving account of th ese journeys, and of the new insights and friendships with which he was rewarded, was not published before his death in 1959, and its first editor, Marjorie Sykes, also died while still at work on the task, which his daughter Gillian M. (Maw) Conacher has now completed.

About the Author:

Gillian Conacher is a Quaker, an Associate of the Iona Community, and a qualified nurse. Her husband joined the Colonial Medical Service in 1948, which led to a life overseas; Tanganyika (Tanzania), Ethiopia, the New Hebrides (Vanuatu), and Malawi. After retiring in 1983, they spent a year in Pakistan, within sight of the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, working for the Church of Scotland. They now live in St. Andrews, have two married sons, and six grandchildren, in England and Canada.