City Country CulturePaulo Coelho, Alchemist of the Pyrenees

From its steep peaks to its wild coast, the Pyrenees is a wild land. During a pilgrimage on the way to Compostela, the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho got lost in these mountains. It was then that he entered into a strange pact with the mountain range that he would honour for years to come: he promised if he could write, he would return every year. He then went on to write his best-selling book The Alchemist.