Itself conceived as one giant stupa, Borobudur is adorned with a further 72 individual stupas, each housing a statue of the Buddha.  Each level of the monument represents a level of consciousness on the path towards enlightenment, until ultimately at the very top, there remains one giant empty stupa – enlightenment and the banishment of all want.

Borobudur is a giant Buddhist monument located in central Java, Indonesia.  Built over 1,200 years it is in essence a vast stupa, decorated with over 2,000 bas relief panels and 500 individual statues of the Buddha.

Long after Islam had replaced Buddhism as the major religion in the Indonesian archipelago, locals still revered the place as holy and full of mystical power and it remains one of the world’s great Buddhist monuments and piligrimage sites.

Most evenings, pilgrims gather to listen to qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music, made famous worldwide by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Bathing at the Pool of the Nectar of Immortality surrounding the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, is one of the great rituals in the Sikh religion.

A Hindu pilgrim bathes in the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers near the north Indian city of Allahabad, a most auspicious spot in Hinduism.  Every twelve years, the Maha Kumbh Mela – the greatest gathering of religious devotees in the world – takes place here.