Unlike most other works on Hindu pilgrimage, Fruitful Journeys begins where the pilgrimage itself begins: at home, with an examination of local shrines, deities, and worship. Gold contributes significantly to the study of popular Hinduism by thus offering a unique perspective on pilgrims' values, presenting ethnographic data from a distinctive regional culture, and integrating the recorded texts of oral traditions with their performance contexts. "Fruitful Journeys is an outstanding work and, therefore, very welcome. Its ethnographic content is rich, its interpretations are evocative, and its prose felicitous. Ann Gold writes purposefully and beautifully." -- T. N. Madan, Contributions to Indian Sociology "This fine book . . . gives us a unique account of pilgrimage from the perspective of householders and their point of origin and return. In addition, Gold throughout provides lively translations and skillful analyses of oral texts, particularly women's songs and Nath bhajans, allowing diverse categories of persons to be heard in their own voices." -- Anthony T. Carter, American Anthropologist "More comparable to Lévi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques than any other work of anthropology I know; but, in fact, the book I was most reminded of was not an anthropological work at all, but E. M. Forster's A Passage to India . . . a complex world complexly perceived and brilliantly recorded. . . . It is really a wonderful book."—Wendy Doniger, author of The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology "More comparable to Lvi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques than any other work of anthropology I know; but, in fact, the book I was most reminded of was not an anthropological work at all, but E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. . . a complex world complexly perceived and brilliantly recorded. . . . It is really a wonderful book." (Wendy Doniger, author of The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology) Ann Grodzins Gold is a Visiting Fellow in the South Asia Program at Cornell University.