In 2010 I travelled to Tibet with my family. The others had been there several times before, but this time there was a new feature for foreign tourists to gawp at in the centre of Lhasa: snipers lounging on the rooftops, ready to take out anyone seen protesting the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The year before, in a marketplace in Sichuan Province, a Buddhist monk had self-immolated, and now the Chinese government was keen to make its presence felt. There hadn’t been any immolations that year, but many more have followed in 2011 and beyond. The protesters are always Tibetan; most of them are monks and nuns. In going to Lhasa and visiting the Jokhang Temple, we were entering the epicentre of their sacred landscape, where the absence of the exiled Dalai Lama was felt most keenly by the faithful.

It felt like cheating to walk into the temple — not because we were foreigners and Christians but because we hadn’t gone through what the Buddhist pilgrims had in order to be there. From the square you could watch them inching round and round the outside of the temple, doing full-body prostrations every three steps, wooden slats strapped to their hands for protection. Many had travelled this way for hundreds of miles, and the few circuits round the outside of the Jokhang Temple were the final rite of passage before they finally entered the sacred space.

Pilgrims of all cultures make their journeys for a whole host of reasons, both sacred and secular. Tomorrow morning we will meet at 10.30am in the Old Library to discuss the concept of pilgrimage: what it meant in the past, how it has changed, and what it means now in the age of selfies and Instagram. How would you document your own pilgrimage, and where would it take you? I hope you will join us for what promises to be a stimulating discussion.