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pilgrimage practices (Vidyarthi et al., 1979; Haberman, 1994; Singh, 1997). Thus, attributes such as ‘sacred’, ‘divine’, ‘religious’, and ‘spiritual’ become central to the environment of sacred places. These same sacred places also provide opportunities to cross from the material world to the divine world (Eck, 1981) and crossing is symbolized in pilgrimage travel to such places. Experiencing the ‘spirit of place’ at these sacred sites attracts both believers and non-believers, and in the process they become epicentres of pilgrimage travel. Pilgrimage, then, becomes the religious framework through which the sanctity of the place is made accessible.

      Yet, important as the relationships between religion and the environment are, there is a paucity of literature discussing these relationships within the context of everyday and mundane issues related to tourism development.

       Sacred Spaces and Places: Where Religion, Tourism, and the Environment Intersect

      Pilgrimage and religious tourism destinations are places where the intersections between religion, tourism, and the environment are significant, heightened, and more readily observed. While there are thousands of places that faith traditions and individuals consider sacred, not all of these places become popular pilgrimage sites (Stoddard and Morinis, 1997; Tanner and Mitchell, 2002). This is because, as noted above, a sacred site is sacred because of the visitation and ritual practices of religious adherents and visitors, wherein rituals are invested with religious beliefs, meanings, and imagery, and institutionalised in the activity of pilgrimage (Bharati, 1963; Turner and Turner, 1978; Morinis, 1984; Nolan and Nolan, 1989). These rituals and the visitation of these sites reinforce the sacred nature of the sites to pilgrims (Bremer, 2004). This positive feedback loop leads to ‘visitors never doubt[ing] that they are experiencing a religious place, regardless of whether or not they share the religious proclivity of the place’ (Bremer, 2000, p. 423).

       The Physical Reality of Environmental Impacts

      Sites of pilgrimage and religious tourism have abstract, metaphysical, and ‘otherworldly’ aspects to their existence. At the same time, they are physical places that are inhabited and act as a destination for religiously motivated visitors. These visitors, as Shackley (2001, p. 54) wrote, ‘will have some impact, whether they wish or not’. Several scholars have discussed the many kinds of direct and indirect environmental impacts that occur in pilgrim-towns and within natural sacred landscapes due in part to religious tourism (Singh, 2002; Dasgupta et al., 2006; Shinde, 2007a; Terzidou et al., 2008; Verschuuren et al., 2010; Alipour et al., 2017). For example, based on observations in European cathedrals and churches, Shackley (2001) classified the direct impacts caused by visitors as deliberate (e.g. theft and vandalism), thoughtless (e.g. litter, pollution, noise), and accidental (e.g. abrasion of artwork or fabric in passing). These types of impacts are commonplace for religious buildings and natural landscapes that receive religious tourists (Nolan and Nolan, 1992; Swatos Jr. and Tomasi, 2002).

      However, such impacts can be viewed very differently when considering religious tourism as an active religious practice, as is the case in many non-western societies. The scale of visitor impact is most evident in large gatherings around religious festivals, such as the Kumbha Mela,¹ a major pan-Indian pilgrimage event and the world’s largest gathering of Hindu devotees that at times has 120 million participants. As a part of the Kumbha Mela, pilgrims participate in ritual bathing in the River Ganga. With millions of people participating in this ritual bathing, several environmental impacts occur. For example, a report prepared by the Central Pollution Control Board in India summarizes the environmental impacts of such mass bathing:

      Mass bathing is accompanied by mass defecation. Apart from that, the offerings of a plethora of materials – from ghee to flowers – are made to the river. This contributes high levels of organic matter to the river. As several infections are transmitted through water […] there are good chances that the bathers are infected by viruses and pathogens that cause diseases like typhoid, cholera, bacterial dysentery and jaundice (cited in Ahmed et al., 2000: para 20).

      While this example of the Kumbha Mela may seem like a larger-than-life instance of the environmental impacts of religious ritual participation, the larger the group of participants in religious rituals, the worse the environmental impacts will be. Indeed, direct impacts are most visible at sacred destinations during festivals and events considered auspicious in religious faiths (Shinde, 2007a; Ruback et al., 2008). These occasions, which closely follow religious calendars, may take place on a single day or occur over the space of several days, weeks, or even months (Singh, 1997). The continual influx of large numbers of pilgrims, let alone religious tourists, puts a severe strain on basic services such as water supply, sanitation, and waste management at these destinations (Kaur, 2019). The physical environment is further stressed with soil and water pollution and the clearing of land for the creation of temporary accommodation facilities and amenities for pilgrims (Nagabhushanam, 1997; Basheer, 2003).

      In many cases, religious rituals, as significant expressions of individual or collective piety, involve the use of different kinds of material offerings, as noted above, which offerings have great potential for causing or adding to already existent environmental pollution (Ruback et al., 2008). For example, many rituals in Hindu pilgrimage involve the sacrificial offerings of money and other material offerings, such as food and floral arrangements, and as pilgrims leave these religious offerings at sacred destinations they become material waste that further compounds the problem (see Shinde, Chapter 3, this volume). These additional waste pressures translate into unhygienic conditions and pose a major challenge for environmental sustainability (Sullivan, 1998; Sofield and Brent, 2001).

      Changes in the seasonal nature of religious events have also exacerbated environmental impacts. It used to be that major religious festival occasions drew the largest influx of visitors and therefore the greatest intensity of environmental impact, while in between these major festivals smaller religious celebrations limited to local participation would occur with smaller environmental impacts (Picard and Robinson, 2006). However, not only have the number and frequency of these large religious celebrations and festivals increased (Shinde, 2007a, 2017; Shinde and Pinkney, 2013), in recent years, religious tourists have begun to visit these sacred destinations between the major religious festivals and events. As such, there are more people in these places for longer durations of time, meaning that the religiously-induced environmental problems that would normally be limited in scale and scope to these large religious events continue during the pilgrimage ‘off-season’. This creates a situation where the resilience of religious sites are severely tested, as there is not enough time for the natural and built environment, let alone the host community, to recover from the impacts of major pilgrimage events. Therefore, there is a persistence of negative environmental impacts for longer durations, leading to a lack of ‘seasonality’ that is often inherent in leisure tourism.

      While the direct environmental impacts, as the examples above note, are directly related to the presence of visitors, indirect environmental impacts are induced in many ways by the types of development patterns experience within these sites. The most significant environmental change in sacred destinations is urbanization that is driven by pilgrimage and tourism development, within which two processes are evident. The first process is driven by the consumptive needs of pilgrims, religious tourists, and leisure-oriented tourists. The focus on ‘the consumption of pleasure’ in these destinations creates a ‘distinctive ecology, one evoking powerful images of pleasure – and this acts as a lure to [pilgrims and] tourists’ (Mullins, 1991, p. 340). This ‘distinctive ecology’ leads to the rapid growth of tourism infrastructure, including hotel accommodation and transportation systems, to service increased visitor flows (Kaur, 1984; Singh, 2002). Also contributing to this rapid growth are the creation of new commercial establishments and real estate development. As Melwani (2001) notes in the pilgrimage centre of Haridwar-Rishikesh,

      Developers have constructed over 200 upscale apartment blocks, and many more are under construction ... Shivalik Ganga Estates in Haridwar uses the tag line: ‘Peace Unlimited. Plots Limited.’ Prices are upward bound − an apartment on the riverfront, which sold for US $25,500 4 years ago, now

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