Steps: 32.238 (28,6km)
Temples: 29 + 30
Things are starting to break. Our shoes, our egos, our will to live (I’m kidding!). But it is kind of funny how every predefined epoch of this trip seems to happen right on schedule.
Today we reached Kochi (the city) and we.are.knackered. Just like we were supposed to be at this point. It’s the ascetic training. It’s the grinding, the keep moving. The pealing off of layers (mental, physical) that comes from repeatedly slapping soles against asphalt.
It’s so interesting to observe what happens to all the things we thought we knew or “knew” we knew. How they get chipped away slowly, but surely.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense. Probably not, I’m tired. All I’m trying to say, I think, is that things are happening just as they are supposed to. And that we really, really need a break.
So we are staying in the city for three nights, looking for new shoes, sleeping in the same bed and walking to some temples without our backpacks on (cue divine music)
As for today, we started from temple 28 on the outskirts of town and walked all morning to temple 29 through what turned out to be agricultural fields.
As someone who works in agriculture back home it was really interesting to see how differently things are done here – the scale is much smaller and of course the crops very different (no rice fields in Denmark)
By the time we had finished at temple 29, the sun was already high in the sky, so we took off our warm clothes, applied the daily layer of sunscreen and set of toward the city and temple 30.
Right next to temple 30 is a very big and well renowned Shinto shrine, one of 68 “ichinomiya” (highest ranked) in Japan. However, when we tried to enter, a guy on a scooter stopped us and started explaining something in Japanese we couldn’t understand.
When we tried google translate it came out something like “only light haired gods are allowed to enter”. Meanwhile we saw two other Japanese people, male and female, walk in just behind us, so we never really figured out what he was trying to tell us, but gave up on trying to get in nonetheless.
After temple 30, it was time for lunch, and by 16 o’clock we reached the city center and our hotel room, which turned out to have a pretty awesome view!
For dinner we found a nearby sushi restaurant with great reviews and authentic cigarette stained ceilings, and gave all the locals in there a laugh trying to order food via google translate (turns out I had written “muscles” instead of “mussels” – potato/potato)
The chef was incredible and came and talked to us after the dinner. Turns out his mother, who helped him in the restaurant, had walked the pilgrimage five times! She gave me a high-five on the way out.
Walking home without our backpacks on, we felt like we were flying.
Jeg troede det var en slange I sov sammen med!
Havde du ikke både de gamle og de nye sko med? Og alt er slidt op?
Dejligt, I fandt ud af at holde en pause og så skønt med en hånd fra den gamle seje dame!
Ønsker jer dejlige slap-af-dage!
Kærlige knus fra Lise Lykke/mor