October 12, 2006

This is the beginning of the third day of the trek and I have covered the first 10 temples. So far most of the path has been along what you might call small rural roadways that pass through rice fields and other small agricultural farms. Half of the first day was spent gettng from Osaka to Tokushima by bus as I didn’t arrive into Bando the small city where I started the walk until well after noon so I only got to 3 temples that first day. So yesterday was the first full day out walking and I covered about 12 miles give or take.

The weather has been good, two nights ago it rained in the night and I thought I might have to be walking in the rain but yesterday was just cloudy and a little bit humid. Today I have awaken to what appears to be clear skies and it should be a good day, though a little warm in the afternoon maybe. Here are a few images of the trek so far.

Temple #1

Rice Feilds along the trek

A Farm House

Kobo Daishi at Temple #9

Fast forward 7 hours. I started this walk today at about 8:30am and arrived at temple 11 at around 11:30. The walk from temple 11 to 12 is only about 5.5miles but starts at elevation 100 and fnishes at temple 12 at just over 2600 feet. Now that may not sould like much but there were at least two accents over mountain passes that were at about 1600 feet then down to 500 feet and back up again so in all I would put the vertical climbing on the day well over 4000 feet. And my 25 pound backpack feels more like 100 pounds. The trek from 11 to 12 is all mountain single track trail and heavily wooded and I arrived at temple 12 around 3:30 and very tired.

So far I haven’t seen a lot of other walking Henro’s on the road but quite a few people who are driving to each temple and a couple of tour buses. But Just as I was covering the last 200 meters before tempe 12 I caught up to a young girl (early 20’s) that was walking alone, we exchanged hello’s (kanichiwa) and I said muzukashi ne (difficult yes) as we were both obviously very tired from all the climbing.

Once at the temple most everyone goes through the little ceromony of saying the heart sutra and some henro’s get their book signed. It all takes only about 10-15 minutes and your ready to move on to the next temple. This was the last temple for me for the day and my guide book said that there were accomodation at temple 12 but this was not true so I wasn’t quite sure where I would be staying as there wasn’t any place to camp nearby. The girl I saw earlier could see my situation and asked if she could help by calling a hotel down the valley and make a reservation for me. She already had a reservation at another hotel somewhat nearby but and it was alreasy full and still an hour walk away. So she also called a taxi and we split the cost of the taxi and she went part way and then I went on to my hotel. This was a really nice hotel with a onsen (hot bath) and dinner and breakfast were included but it was pretty expensive and I can’t be doing that very often or I will be coming home on the next bus in about 3 weeks time as I am on the beer budget travel package.

Till next time,

Doha Matte!