Kumano Kudo

I am now on the spiritual enlightenment part of my journey. That is the Kumano Kudo pilgrimage route on the Kii peninsula. I had booked the trip through Kumano Tourism which is a local cooperative which coordinated the luggage transfers, booked the hotel accommodation which also included breakfast and suppers with a provided Bento box for lunch. All I had to do was show up and walk. I took the 9:20 train from Osaka arriving in Tannebe at 11:20. Someone was waiting at the tourist office immediately adjacent to the train station with my name on a white board who I handed my luggage off to. I went into the tourism office and there I was helped to buy a ticket for the which would take me to Takijiri where I would start my walk. There were 2 bus loads of European/North American tourist approximately 35 people on the two buses but I get the feeling that people are doing all sorts of various combinations of hiking days and rest days. There seemed to be a larger group doing it over 8 days.

The Kumano is a 1500 year old pilgrimage route. The Kii peninsula has for the Japanes represented a borderland between the living and the afterlife lending itself to a pilgrimage route. The Shinto religion, a prehistoric religion proceeding Buddhism felt that the region was the home to natural deities known as Kami. The peak pilgrimage era was 794 to 1185 and the pilgrims were mainly aristocratics. There are three principal shrines along the route and smaller subsidiary shrines where people would camp, worship and do purifying rituals

There was a small museum at the start of the hike which I had a cursory look at but wanted to get hiking before the large group so I headed out quickly. The first day was fairly easy as we only had to hike to Takahara a 3.9 km hike from the beginning of the trail. It was steep with an elevation gain of 400 metres. The great thing about these hiking trails is that people get pretty spread out so I didn't come across many people. I probably hiked for less than 2 hours before getting to the Takahara rest station where I bought a plum soda, chatted with some Vancou overites and waited for my 4 pm ride to the guest house where I was staying. My main wildlife sightings were 2 snakes, one black and one green. Supposedly some of the snakes here are venomous. WaThe guest house was a 20 minute drive back down the valley past our starting point. We picked up two Australians Scott and Janine just after leaving the guest area. They had hiked 29 km from Tannebe which was quite impressive. They are doing a longer route over 8 days with one rest day. We were next door to each other and shared a common area and they were quite fun to chat with. We all ate a wonderful traditional Japanese supper provided by our guesthouse owners. It was probably the best meal that I have had in Japan.

Today was a longer day clocking in at 13 km and 600 metres of elevation. It started off a little steeply but at about half way leveled off and became a ridge hike dipping dow into a river valley. There are lots of little shrines along the route. The vegetation consists of Japanese ceders which looked like they were planted after forestry in the 50s. There are supposedly some residual old growth forests but I haven't seen any of them. The predicted time for this segment is 6 to 8 hours but I was going to log in before 1 at my accommodation so I slowed down a little. I arrived early but kept hiking for another 800 metres to check out some more soji or subsidiary shrines before returning to my accommodation and waiting for check in at 3 pm. Just after 3 pm my friends Scott and Jeanine showed up so I get to enjoy their company for another night.

Tomorrow will be the longestRead more