Steps: 33.995 (26,3km)
Temples: 66 + 67
At 950 meters above sea level, temple 66 is the highest located of all the 88 temples on the pilgrimage.
Luckily, our wonderful inn-keeper had volunteered to drive us back to the trail head, which we passed by yesterday, saving us from 9 kilometers of backtracking.
Feeling energized by this much more preferable start to the day, we set off up the trial, which shot straight up into the forest.
However, the last time we walked up a mountain without warming up, I earned myself an injury that took almost two weeks to get over, so this time we took it very slow.
We were both positively surprised to find that we hardly broke a sweat climbing almost one kilometer straight up into the sky – something really has happened to our fitness level since coming here!
Temple 66 for some reason had a very strong eggplant theme going on – we never figured out why.
Other than that we didn’t really find it as impressive as some of the other mountain temples we have visited. We read in the guide book that it was burned down in the 16th century, which is probably why it felt very “new” and didn’t have the same overgrown mystical charm as mountain temples 20 and 21, for instance.
At the top we also re-met Jonas’ backpack twin*, Michael from Canada, whom we had lunch with yesterday, and we spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and leapfrogging down the mountain to temple 67.
*(I also have a backpack twin on the trail, whom we met once at cape Ashizuri and again at temple 35 – she and I both agreed that the Lumina is the best pack to have ever been made for women).
Somewhere along the descend we crossed into Kagawa prefecture, officially entering the final part of the pilgrimage, also known as “nirvana”.
Apparently it’s hot in Nirvana, because the coolness of the mountain was replaced with a sweltering heat as we reached the bottom, and as we walked towards temple 67, we dreamt of cool drinks and a place to sit down and untie our shoes.
When we saw on Google maps that there was a restaurant a little off the path that was open for lunch, we decided to make a small detour.
Alas, when we got to the place it was closed, meaning that lunch consisted of snickers bars, peach sodas and a bag of chips at temple 67… I guess you could say all kinds of childhood dreams are coming true on this trip 😅
At our ryokan for the night, we had a much needed bath and a hot meal and are now more than ready for a good nights sleep.
I strongly suspect the real reason this prefecture is called nirvana, is because of the feeling you get from stepping into a hot onsen after having just spent the day climbing over a 950m high mountain.