Steps: 28.469 (26,8km)
Temples: 52 + 53
Beautiful sunny day today, where we walked north out of Matsuyama towards temples 52.
On our way onwards towards temple 53, we had just started looking around for places to eat, when a man waved us over. Turns out the local … Read more
Steps: 31.194 (28,0km)
Temples: None
We left our hotel in the mountains relatively late this morning (~8.30am) because we wanted to wait out the last of the rain.
We had only made it a few hundred meters down the road before we were stopped by a group of older people, who had just parked their car to go visit the … Read more
Steps: 32.270 (22,2km) (+7,5)
Temples: 84 + 85 + 86 + 87
Temple fatigue is a real thing y’all and at some point I think every pilgrim starts to feel like the temples all kind of blend together and start to look alike.
But then there are days like today when you get to temples that really stand … Read more
Steps: 40.010 (35,1km)
Temples: 12 (one of the “extra” temples)
Today was an easy day in the sense that pretty much all we had to do was put one foot in front of the other and walk straight ahead along an even road.
However, our feet and legs felt heavy and by the time we arrived at our hotel by … Read more
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 … Read more
Steps: 40.663 (40,3km)
Temples: None
Everyone knows that time is relative – but today we learned that distance is, too. Whereas yesterday’s 20k felt like a small lifetime, I was very surprised when Jonas told me that we had surpassed 40 today. I didn’t feel at all as tired as some of our other long days (Jonas unfortunately has a … Read more
Steps: 20.518 (17,5km)
Temples: 19
They say you can’t buy happiness but this morning at temple 19 we decided to try anyway. Most temples sell an assortment of little charms and when we found some paper knots that promised happiness for the small price of only 200¥ we couldn’t resist.
It seemed to work because so far we have had … Read more
Steps: 34.107 (29,3km)
Temples: 9 + 10 + 11
Today we started to realize why we haven’t seen that many other henrō on the road so far – we have simply been sleeping in too late 😅 But when we got up at 6.30 today and headed out the door around 8 (as the last ones, mind you) we spent … Read more
