You will find that ideal in Christianity as well. For example, the ancient desert Fathers wandered into the Egyptian desert to practice asceticism. Also, St. Francis of Assissi began his order by wandering the countryside, relying on alms, and restoring churches. Check out a story called The Way of the Pilgrim. It is a depiction of the 19th century Russian holy man who wanders from village to village reciting the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner."
Er, yeah, sort of LOL. Rasputin was an Orthodox monk who claimed to have healing powers. The Emperess of Russia was enamored with him. I believe that the majority opinion is that he was a fraud. I haven't met anyone yet who argued that he was a legitimate holy man and I know that the Orthodox Church does not look upon him too highly.
There are a number of 'supernatural' feats attributed to him, but I doubt many people would give credance to them nowadays. At the time though, he had quite a following in Russian 'high society', despite being a rather uncouth peasant from the back-of-beyond, and a lot of people really did believe that he had supernatural powers. At school I was fascinated by the story of how he was murdered. The amount of punishment it took to kill him suggests that he had some kind of special powers. Spooky...
