The World's Most Sacred Destinations (PHOTOS)

Travel as a vehicle for spiritual transformation is hardly a new notion - seekers have practiced the act of pilgrimage for as long as they've looked up to the skies and attempted communion with a higher power.

Even in today's short-attention-span society, setting out to honor the divine or ponder the mysterious is a time-honored tradition that refuses to wane with the changing tides of our technologically-driven lives.

ShermansTravel.com put together a list of 10 sacred places that showcases points of perceived power and peace around the globe, where the physical appears to meld seamlessly with the metaphysical whether due to awe-inspiring natural settings, reported ties to great gods or holy humans, or long-standing consecration as sites of worship and ritual. (Huffington Post Travel also compiled a list of the more unexpected sacred places around the world.)

Text courtesy of ShermanTravel.com, adapted from "Top 10 Sacred Places."

What missed the list? Send us your thoughts.

Comments

[Paz]

02:47 AM on 03/30/2011

The whole idea of "sacred places" - a purely human invention - is fundamentally delusional and ultimately very harmful. If any place is sacred then every place is sacred. If any person is holy then every person is holy. Varanasi is a great example. As others have pointed out it's a disgusting affront to nature at this point. It's no more "Holy" than Toledo or the trees in your backyard. An Indian city like Jodhpur, brimming with energy and good will and spirituality, is to me a much more "sacred place." In any case, the most "sacred" places I've ever been all have zero humans.

[hagagaga]

08:48 PM on 03/28/2011

Shouldn't Mecca be on the list and not some stupid new age shrine?

[Hvartski]

06:21 PM on 03/28/2011

"Sacred" in my opinion is what you feel when you're there. I've been to the Vatican, Stonehenge, Cathedral Rock in Sedona. What I felt there was nothing compared to the calm and majesty that overcame me in Sukothai, Thailand.

[Terri Lorz]

11:36 AM on 03/27/2011

I want to go to all of these places - Terri Jo Lorz

[Tsalco]

03:11 AM on 03/26/2011

Why is Mecca not on this list?

[verylargehat]

06:36 PM on 03/28/2011

Good call!

[Cannonball Taffy O Jones]

02:04 AM on 03/26/2011

One single canal irrigating one single field will have done more good to humanity that all of these ‘sacred’ sites put together.

[enigmatic zero]

12:46 PM on 03/26/2011

You might be interested to know, that a few of these "sacred" sites were in fact the linchpins/centers of massive irrigation projects.

The Angkhor Wat, and other temples in that region are part and parcel of one of the biggest irrigation works known to mankind. They not only helped irrigate huge swathes of the land, but also had massive tanks that preserved the water so irrigation could continue during the dry seasons as well. Most historians agree that it was due to this huge network of irrigation systems, governed by the centers of administrative control(these temples) that Cambodia continued to see an exponential increase in harvest.

The same goes for the place in Peru, have you noticed the effort that went into creating one of the most sophisticated step-irrigation system in the world?

[Cannonball Taffy O Jones]

01:06 PM on 03/26/2011

So?
 
Any material benefit provided by these sites was secondary to their useless supernatural purpose.
 
Excusing the extravagant waste that was incurred in their construction and maintenance is rather like a modern Christian defending the billions they spend on churches by pointing to the odd soup kitchen they run.

[iLdoRight]

10:35 PM on 03/25/2011

Perhaps the most sacred journey one can make is the one Jesus spoke of at Matthew 7:3-5 where he said something like, "Why be bothered about the mote in your brother's eye while you still have the (mental) beam in your own (mental) eye. First get yourself right, then you can try to help others get right".

[GoldenFlowerMedia]

09:35 PM on 03/25/2011

Great photos. Varanasi is definitely a magical place. We just released a DVD that was shot in Varanasi called Into The Heart Of Shiva. http://www.goldenflowermedia.com/heartofshiva.htm

[Indigo1941]

09:29 PM on 03/25/2011

St. Mary Major in Rome is prettier, St. John Lateran in Rome is holier, St. Paul Outside the Walls in the most holy but St. Peter's is where the tourists are. And so it goes with each of those slides. Where the tourists are. I don't those are especially holy sites. Holy has a enegy that doesn't draw in the ca-ching of tourist coin. The vortexes (vorteces?) of Sedona are closing, Angkor Wat is mostly abandoned, Stonehenge is no where nearly as impressive as the stone age temples of Malta, the Potala is nice enough but the Dalai Lama doesn't live there any more. The Castillo in Chichen Itza is a splendid monument but 30,000 tourists a day tromping through pretty well drowns out whatever spiritual resonance it might have.

Advice to editors: try again, this time go where the tourists aren't the draw.

[Allen Reed Jensen]

08:59 PM on 03/25/2011

Sacred seems to me a very subjective term. Obviously the Vatican, Jerusalem and those Buddhist Temples shown are still held as sacred places by billions of people but Stonehenge? Plus those locations built by pre-Colombian Incans and Aztecs have lost their original meaning even to the people who live around them. I would like to see a similar list of sacred location here in the United States. Most of these we've all heard of.

[Buddy H Okc Aim]

05:31 PM on 03/25/2011

Bear Butte in S.D. is sacred to many Native American tribes. The absolute disgrace is the biker bars being put up right next to the mountain where the tribes go to pray and fast. It is a shame that there is a law that you can not have an adult bar next to a church, but that does not cover Native American churches. The Native Americans are praying while loud music is provided for the drunks and nude women next door. Would you want this near your church??

[MichaelAKD]

04:54 PM on 03/25/2011

here in the states devil's tower in ne wyoming has been a sacred place for two dozen native american tribes for hundreds of years. used as a place for funerals, prayer offerings, sweatlodge ceremonies, as well as the sun dance ritual however unlike other cultures that cherish and protect such sites what is in the pipeline here? pun intended, for this our unique and sacred site? why a canadian company has big energy plans...in the immortal words of a once prominent politician, "drill baby drill." why am i so upset, angry, disturbed, because on my way into town today our oil boom just crossed another very sad milestone. it is common place to see wells pop up in people's back yards as most do not own mineral rights, but today i saw something i thought i never would, in fact had never even considered a possibility. in one of the old graveyards they were exhuming bodies buried a century or more back with the oil drilling equipment parked and waiting. heaven knows we need energy and we need to be energy independent but is nothing sacred in this country any longer? the only thing truly sacred and safe in this world is money and power regardless how it is attained. not to forget, we also have our local lutheran church, with you guessed it, an oil drilling platform sitting in back where the kids used to play horse shoes, runs 24/7 too, even on sundays.

[l2ealest]

04:54 PM on 03/25/2011

Varanasi used to be sacred, but as the population has grown, it's become a disgusting place. You'll find dead bodies floating around on any give day. Plenty of pictures if you search.

[beauwulff]

04:14 PM on 03/25/2011

Where's Seaside Heights, New Jersey?

[bobbyperu]

03:58 PM on 03/25/2011

LOL!! Sedona, AZ. Got to be kidding me!