On a Pilgrimage With a Canadian Comedian

There are many guidebooks on the Camino (or "The Way" in English), and even more travel books in which the author shares his or her personal experience from this pilgrimage. Some of them are serious, some spiritual, some funny... and then there is one which is laugh-out-loud-wipe-tears-and-hope-nobody-can see-you-funny.

Comedian Paul Huschilt from Canada had always wanted to write an "incomplete guide book" to something. When caught in a weak moment he agreed to come with two friends to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain, he decided to make the best of it and finally write one. The result is "The Reluctant Pilgrim: An Incomplete guide to Walking the Camino de Santiago".

The Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage network of roads across Western Europe, all ending up in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The road Huschilt and his friends chose to walk is the Camino Frances, so named because it traditionally starts on the French side of the Pyrenees. From there it snakes across the North of Spain for 780 kilometers to the west.

Author and friends decided to walk a shorter stretch of this road, from Burgos to Santiago, which makes 505 kilometers. Oh, excuse me, that should of course be 505,2 kilometers (as is regularly pointed out in the book)! He comes to regret this decision many times on the journey - but that's what makes it so much fun for us readers.

Two years ago, my husband and I met while walking the Camino, and on the same day we also met Paul Huschilt and his three walking companions. They were now walking the first half of the pilgrimage, from St. Jean Pied-de-Port to Burgos, to complete their journey.

We kept bumping into them for a while until Pamplona. There we had a lovely farewell dinner at a tapas bar (tapas is really called pinchos in Pamplona) before they moved on and we stayed behind. He told us about their previous pilgrimage, and his plans to publish this book, and since then I patiently waited for it to become available on Amazon.

I think I was one of the first people ever to order it, and it turned out to be well worth the wait! And I am of course not secretly hoping he will publish one for his second walk as well. Maybe I would even get a small mention..?

The title of this book would be enough to make you think twice about doing this pilgrimage. The tagline, "Everything you need to know to stay home", takes it even one step further. Why would you want to go yourself, when you can sit comfortably in your own warm, lovely, clean home and read about it?

It is a bit of a paradox, then, that reading this book will make you want to get up and out there, buy a backpack, and do exactly what he seems to advise us against. It fills you with a desire to be part of this age-old tradition, not only for the tradition's sake, but in the hopes that you will encounter the same strange variety of people and have the same bizarre and - at the same time - magical experiences that Huschilt describes.

You will laugh out loud, and I take no responsibility for embarrassing incidents caused by the reading of this book in public. Sometimes, trying not to laugh will cause a grimace that makes it look like you have gas. I wish I wasn't speaking from experience...