Part photo essay and part travel diary, this moving book reflects Nomachi's own spiritual quest and his interest in pilgrimages, or, as he calls them, "prayer routes."

Here, through dramatic images that distill the essence of our humanity, he captures moments of prayer along pilgrimage routes in some of the world's most remote places, from the Sahara to the Andes, including the rarely photographed cities of Mecca and Medina.

Having converted to Islam, Nomachi has arrived at an intensely personal understanding of what it means to search for God. Prayer, pilgrimage, and religion, he says, are phenomena that affect humanity as a whole, without distinction for individual traits or background. Such is the thinking that sharpens Nomachi's sensitivity to the elements of spiritual life.

This book, which brings together thirty years of the his best work, comprises portraits of people and places. In each image, he strives to reveal what unites individuals in the ineffable relationship between the whole and its every component: what it is, for example, that leads Muslims to Qa'aba, Buddhists to Lhasa, Ethiopian Christians to Lalibela.