I spent about 35 days walking 500 miles walking on the ancient pilgrimage path. A million is a rough estimate of the number of steps I took while walking the Camino de Santiago. I made the calculation on day 13 of my trek as I walked along a portion of the path that was parallel to a highway with kilometer markers. Over the course of a kilometer, I counted 1,153 steps. I did the math and discovered that I would take a total of 909,717 steps on the trail between St. Jean Pied-de-Port, where it began, and Santiago de Compostela, where it ended. I added in another 3,000 or so steps per day to cover the walks to dinner and short hikes for sightseeing. One million steps seems a good estimate.
When I arrived at the first hostel, the hospitalero (hostel host) was flirtatiously helping three young women from France. The mood of the room was light until another young lady from Hungary arrived with tears streaming down her face. All attention turned to her until we determined that her tears, running over freckles and framed by red dreadlocks, came from a joyous place. She was emotional about being at the start of the Camino.