Steps: 35.743 (29,0km)
Temples: 60 + 61
Right before coming here, Jonas read a book called Small Gods (one of the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett) wherein it is explained that the minor deities (or “small gods”) loose their power, if people stop believing in them.
So naturally, whenever we walk by a small, seemingly forgotten deity deep in the forest, he had to give it a little love – wave, take a picture, acknowledge its existence.
It started out innocently enough, but by now he has a whole album on his phone, titled Small Gods, full of pictures of the little Buddha statues.
Often I will parade him for slowing us down by constantly stopping to take pictures, because honestly there are a lot of these little statues – As in a lot a lot.
But secretly? I also love him a little bit more each time.
Today was a mountain day, my favorite kind. We backtracked a little to get to the start of the trail for temple 60, walked up 800m to the temple and then back down again.
We had some nice company along the way talking to Gerard from the Netherlands. He is retired and back to finish his pilgrimage, which he started in 2020, but had to abandon abruptly when corona hit.
We meet many retired people here, and are simultaneously impressed with their physical ability (many of them easily outrun us) but also very glad that we didn’t ourselves wait that many years to make this dream a reality. They all tell us the same thing – there are more important things in life than work.
When we were almost at the bottom it started raining a little, and as we walked into temple 61, it felt more like a shower than a drizzle.
in my opinion, but memorable for sure
We waited some of the rain out at the temple, but finally decided to just get on with it and walk the last 20 mins in the rain.
As Gerard kept saying – it’s just water.
Dinner again was (an enormous amount of) hotpot, but this time with a new twist. Sukiyaki is a Japanese version where you boil the vegetables and meat in a sweet soy sauce and then dip them in raw egg before you eat it. It was really delicious!
More rain on the forecast for the next two days – good thing we have a lot of small gods to keep us company.
So nice that jonas keep the small gods active!
All your food looks so delicios!
Love from us 🙋♂️🙋♀️
Thanks for the good conversation at lunch today. (April 17).
Not quite the same type of literature, but you might give The God of Small Things a read. It was the debut novel of Indian author Arundhati Roy. It won the Booker Prize in 1997. Powerful story.
Temple 61 had the most unusual statue I have seen on the pilgrimage so far- Kannon holding a kamikaze pilot. Also a nice golden Buddha in the auditorium above the temple.
Nice to meet him too Michael! Will definitely check out the book!
We were a bit jealous when we walked by your accommodation this afternoon and still had another 7k to go 😅 see you tomorrow on the mountain 🏔️👍