Nakasendo Trail

After visiting Kyoto we planned on hiking a portion of the historic Nakasendo Trail in the Gifu Prefecture 🎒
The Nakasendo was a mountainous inland route that once connected Edo (present-day Tokyo) with Kyoto during the Edo period (1603-1868).
Part of that route is the 85-kilometer Kiso Road which is home to eleven post towns. Those were created to accommodate travelers on their journey to and from Edo. We decided to hike sections of this path while visiting some of the well-preserved post towns 🏘️

Our hike led through lush green forests, crystal-clear streams, waterfalls and remote rural villages 🌳🏞️
The mountains and forests in this region are home to bears 🐻 Along the way, we always found bells to ring as bears do not like loud noise 🔔 It lowered our chances to come across one, although we sometimes thought seeing one from far away would have been crazy exciting!

Our trail started in Magome and led us through Tsumago-Juku, Kiso-Fukushima and Narai, one of the best preserved post towns. The trail is well marked and today the towns are well connected by train. Even the train rides offered amazing mountain views 😍

Our hostels along the way were all super nice and unique. We spent a nice evening with Argentinians who taught us about anime in Magome, celebrated a birthday with some sake in Nagiso with Germans and enjoyed our first onsen in Kiso-Fukushima 🧖‍♀️🧖‍♂️

It was such a beautiful trip to nature and to rural Japan - and definitely one of our best experiences in Japan 💚もっと詳しく