The Dalai Lama has said that the greatest pilgrim doesn't need to go anywhere, but for most of us it is important to enact in the outer world that which we wish to accomplish in the inner world. The ancient tradition of pilgrimage can still be found in Tibet where the landscape and the fellow pilgrims are seen as sacred. The yoga of pilgrimage is alive, just alive enough to feel in Tibet. There is the notion that our actions of body, speech and mind matter, that we can direct ourselves to awakening through training.
Pilgrimage is an enactment of the sacred by the body in relationship with the earth.
Reading the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism alone it can appear that spiritual practice is largely an internal dialogue , but looking at the faces and hands of the Tibetan pilgrims makes it clear that it is a dialogue with the place as well, inner and outer inter linked. In Tibet, pilgrims engage in a series of practices at each of the sacred sites and monasteries they visit. These include prostration, prayer, making offerings, and circumnambulation. At the heart of each of these practices is intention. The intention is to train one's mind toward the path and realization of enlightenment.