Ise to .....

Wheeeee we're on the Iseji route now, and judging by the number of spiderwebs we walked through, the fact we didn't see a single other walker, and the surprised reactions of every Japanese person we spoke to beforehand, we might have it to ourselves. We caught a train to Kawazoe to start, given we won't have time to be purists about this trail and our accommodation is another 25km or so away. As the ellipsis suggests, there's a story there.

Mostly flat and paved today, winding through towns and along rural roads with smatterings of highway sidelines and one mountain pass. Much more similar to Camino than the solid hiking of Nakahechi. It's better signposted than we thought, which is reassuring, but we will definitely get our money's worth of our esims with google maps.

We hadn't worn bear bells until today, but given how strongly they were suggested (see last photo) and the isolation, we jangled nervously through the forest. Saw a centipede the size of a small sausage (James said it's the most painful bite you can get, isn't that nice) and that of course got photographed, along with the dead viper on the road earlier with a bit of guts coming out.Read more