Spiritual tourism as a quest

It is the intention of this paper to conflate the theoretical discussion of spiritual tourism with personal accounts written by writers of literary travel memoirs. The first part of the paper will discuss the reasons for travelling for spiritual growth, as opposed to the traditional notion of religious pilgrimage supported by Michel Foucault's theory of the heterogeneous aspects of discursive formation. The second part of the paper looks into the existing typologies of spiritual tourism and compares them to Joseph Campbell's (1973) stages of a mythic quest. Lastly, the third part supports the academic discussion with brief excerpts from three literary spiritual travel memoirs.