Winter 2025-26

Accommodation last night was very different from the previous nights home stays -a big lux hotel with an onsen- shared natural hot baths. Once we had negotiated the dos and donts of onsen behaviour - mainly revolving around soap, slippers and ( lack of) clothing, we were able to come to a slow simmer in a pit dug in the side of the riverbed outside the hotel.
Later I was like a kid at Christmas in the all you can eat Japanese buffet, and felt quite the part in my kimono/yukata combo, apparent from trying not to flash the waitress.
All this led to a good nights sleep ( for me) and a pre dawn start. We decided to rip up the agenda/ route set to finish or trek in style and took a bus to kogechi, allowing us to complete the trip as we started it- on foot. This did mean traversing the " body breaking slope" and "abode of the dead", but allowed us to drop down into Nachi Taisha, a fitting end to our odyssey. What we hadnt planned for was dreich cold weather , and thick cloud, so a different vibe today. Though I'd be happy for the sunny weather we'd had so far to have continued, the misty clag gave a spooky ethereal feel: abode of the dead indeed. This section of trail was remote but a combination of Japanese infrastructure and technology meant there was one of the ubiquitous vending machines at 800m half way, where we discovered they dispensed hot coffee and hot soup!
A long descent through the cloud base at the end was frustrated by the lack of gaps in the trees so we could only imagine the fantastic views of vertiginous mountain slopes, swirling clouds and distant Pacific Ocean... some price for trees!
Arriving at Nachisen/Nachi Taisha was arriving in a different world- bus tours and folk everywhere. But another sacred Buddhist / Shinto space. Here is the highest waterfall in Japan- the Nachi Taisha, so beautiful that it became an object of worship itself. Deification of natural objects is a common feature of the kumano Shintoism and what makes walking through this landscape more special.
A bus down to the coast and we were back in a fancy hotel with a flurry of slippers, kimonos, tatami and onsens. Dinner was a veritable feast- the best meal yet, multiple courses, served either raw or cooked at the table, all served in intricate pottery .God help the washer- up.Читать далее