The Art of Sacred Travel

"Mevlana Rumi tells the story of a poor man in Baghdad who dreams that a treasure is buried in Cairo under a particular bridge and thus sets off with great difficulty to retrieve it. In Cairo he is told by a policeman who takes pity on him that he too has had a dream that great wealth was buried in a house in Baghdad. It was the street and the house of the poor man who returned home to discover the wealth he believed was in another city. Rumi’s point is that it is often necessary to travel, at times experiencing hardship and duress, only to discover that what you had set out to achieve, was possible without having to undertake the journey. And yet without the pilgrimage itself that realization would not have been possible."
The Art of Sacred Travel
Nazim Baksh

(Erm, is the 'Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho based on Rumi's work?)