Sole-to-soul world travel

A Maui man soon begins a 3,500-mile walk to Israel, his longest spiritual trek yet

A common saying is that the journey of a lifetime begins by putting one foot in front of the other.

If that's true, world traveler Brandon Wilson of Upcountry Maui has trekked enough for several lives. On April 23, Wilson will depart Dijon, France, with his friend and fellow author Georges Labrousse to begin a walking pilgrimage to Jerusalem that will cover 3,500 miles.

The remarkable thing is that this will be Wilson's fifth such walk of a spiritual nature. In his early 50s, Wilson is also a member of the long-standing Explorers Club and Artists Without Frontiers.

"The first one was in 1992, when my wife (Cheryl) and I followed the Buddhist pilgrimage trail from Lhasa, Tibet, to Kathmandu, Nepal, covering 650 miles. We were the first Westerners to do the trail. That trip exposed us to the essence of traveling one step at a time. It changes the whole experience, to be able to wallow in the minutiae of life and meet the local people, staying with farmers and old monks."

Wilson would write about the inspiring experience of crossing Tibet in his 2005 book "Yak Butter Blues: A Tibetan Trek of Faith."

"I called it that because their culture is being assimilated by the Chinese to the point of it being cultural genocide. Soon, the only native things remaining will be yak butter and yak tea. Also, their faith in the Dalai Lama's return for this long a time ... I feel should be supported."

He wove the concept of Tibetan independence into his impressions about the trek. "The conditions are pretty dramatic there, being between 12,000 to 17,000 feet above sea level. We ourselves went through blizzards, being shot at by Chinese and at times being forced to go through a slow starvation diet. But we were able to find food and shelter at the right times, as the Tibetan people were kind and very generous to us."

THE TREK to Jerusalem -- which should end in the Holy City on Nov. 19, if Wilson and Labrousse's schedule holds true -- is the third in a series of what Wilson calls "big Christian treks."

In 1999 he walked the well-worn Camino de Santiago 500 miles across northern Spain.

"In early European history, before Reformation," Wilson said, "pilgrimage treks were very common. Kings to popes to common men would do these as a matter of spiritual growth, sometimes for penance, other times asking for miracles." The treks would terminate at holy sites, the camino ending at the cathedral where St. James the Apostle is entombed.

"Last summer, I did the camino again, this time with my wife, and it was such an enjoyable experience. Doing this reduces life to a certain simplicity. Each day, we would get up in modest inns or hostels with people from all over the world, walk from sunrise to early afternoon, and stay in simple 'pensiones,' dormitories, many set in old monasteries and religious buildings dating back to the Middle Ages.

"All kinds of people in different physical conditions do the trek -- those in their 70s, high school students walking on their break, people on bicycles, or those infected with cancer and MS on special bikes. Some people use the walk as a life transition, such as coming out of a divorce, or after losing a job or close friend. This gives them a period of time to readjust their lives.

"As for my wife and I, we walked anywhere between 20 to 30 kilometers a day. It gave us a chance to unplug and still the mind and realize what's important in life."

The other path of early Christianity that Wilson has walked is the lengthy Via Francigena, the Frankish Route, covering 1,150 miles from Canterbury, England, to Rome.

BUT WILSON sees this upcoming pilgrimage to Jerusalem as particularly important, "a 3,500-mile trek for peace." "We'll be going on an amazing pathway, tracing the Danube Valley through Germany and Austria for 1,200 kilometers, past Budapest, Hungary, then south through Bosnia, Bulgaria, jumping continents from Europe to Asia, across Turkey, then through the Middle East.

"This trip will definitely have its own set of challenges. The weather will contrast between possible near-freezing temperatures in southern Germany to close to 100 degrees in central Turkey and the Middle East. It might be tough to find shelter along the way while trying to stay true to the trek path. Luckily, we have a letter of introduction from the Vatican, but there is still the uncertainty of the Middle East when we cross Syria and Jordan."

Wilson will travel with his friend Labrousse for seven months. The Frenchman is a 68-year-old former university administrator whom Wilson met in '99 on the Camino de Santiago. Wilson's wife, a TV production manager in Lahaina, will join them in Budapest.

The Maui traveler has learned that life will provide when least expected while he's on the road.

On that first Tibet trip, he and is wife lost a gas bottle for the stove that provided one of their few luxuries: hot water.

"Now we have no hot water, and we both sunk into a depression. We're filthy, we haven't bathed in weeks, fighting sandstorms ... Then there's a knock at our door, we open it, and there's the lady of the inn with a bottle of hot water! It was serendipity, the brick-to-the-head moment that reminded us that we were meant to be there, to have faith and stop worrying about the small details.

"That's my philosophy in everyday life as well. We find angels along the way of our travels, people who come out of nowhere to offer a place to stay, give food from their food stand or cart, or even buy us a glass of wine."