Views along the Kumano Kodo trail. Photo / Angela Barnett
From venomous snakes and strange rashes to stunning temples and scenery, hiking the Kumano Kodō trail promises challenges and beauty but never boredom, writes Angela Barnett.
Five minutes into the Kumano Kodō trail, we passed two young, fit-looking guys who’d got off the bus before us. One had fallen on the uneven stone steps, leaving a bloody gash on his forehead. I freaked out. If the fit guys couldn’t hack it, how could two parents with a couple of plugged-in teenagers, and not much hiking experience between us, fare?
It was my bright idea to add a 70km trek along a 1000-year-old trail with dodgy wifi to our family holiday in Japan. The Kumano Kodō is one of only two Unesco-listed pilgrimage routes in the world (the other is Spain’s Camino de Santiago), although, admittedly, I wasn’t even sure why people did pilgrimage trails: to find themselves? Lose themselves? Forget or perhaps, remember?
Mostly, I hoped it wouldn’t be too hard, or worse, boring for the teenagers.
We chose the most popular route, the imperial Nakahechi trail, walking over six days from Takijiri-oji to Nachisan – famous on Instagram for its orange temple beside Japan’s highest waterfall. Armed with day packs, snacks, two walking poles, and a booklet showing elevation, distances, walking times, and hazards like venomous Mamushi snakes and biting Mukade centipedes, we set off.
The first day was only three hours, but it was a steep climb over ancient stone steps, wobbly rocks, and twisted tree roots. Our voices echoed through somber Japanese cypress and camphor trees until we fell into silence, broken only by our huffing and puffing. Not far up, we stopped at a Buddhist birthing cave, which promises a smooth birth in the future for anyone who squeezes through a narrow crevice between two boulders. Having no intention of more births, I took photos while my daughter and partner (“you never know,” he said) wriggled through. We climbed on, towards our destination; a tiny village with rice paddies, wooden minka houses, a water wheel, and, as we discovered the next morning, a pop up coffee cart.
Unlike hikes in Aotearoa, solar-powered vending machines dot the Kumano Kodō, just far enough apart to make you rush when one appears. Some sell hot coffee in cans, others cold Coke, ice cream (the teenagers couldn’t believe it), and occasionally beer. We walked in late November, when autumn leaves in every shade of pink, red, gold, and yellow greeted us in the small mountain villages every evening. We stayed in ryokan guesthouses or family-run minshuku, with tatami-mat rooms, surprisingly comfortable futons, and fresh kimonos. Our luggage miraculously arrived before us each day.
We fell quickly into a comforting routine: early starts with eggs, rice, miso, green tea, and dried fish for breakfast, hoofing through the morning, then cruising after lunch. We stopped for views, coaxed village cats from hiding, and lingered by curious oji and jizō statues.
Open to everyone, we walked by emperors, monks, and commoners on the Shinto-Buddhist route. Whether you’re spiritual or secular, it’s impossible not to admire the quiet devotion at the small oji shrines, where people leave coins, flowers and toys, and we grew competitive about stamping our Kumano passports at the letterboxes along the way.
One small jizō was dedicated to Ogin, a young geisha who met a man named Toyonojo in Kyoto in 1816, and she followed him to the Kumano Kodō. Sadly, two bandits attacked Ogin, and she “perished in the fight”, which sparked a family debate: what happened to Toyonojo, and why didn’t it say “murdered” instead of perished?
We took turns walking together or apart, listening to the hush and thrum of the forest, or music to get us up steep parts.
Midway through, my body rebelled. A strange rash bloomed on my fingers, and blisters formed on both heels despite careful preparation. Over dinner (tempura vegetables, sukiyaki, rice and miso most nights), my son read about the Daru along that section of the hike: serpent-like witch spirits that slipped invisibly into the body, “inflicting a variety of painful torments”. From then on, any ache or complaint was blamed on the Daru.
Everyone faced their own challenges on the walk. Before starting in Osaka, our son contracted a vomiting bug and missed the first day. My partner battled his little toes (the Daru!). And our daughter faced the bells. Many hikers wear them to ward off bears, but they triggered instant annoyance whenever we got stuck behind a gaggle of jinglers.
Yet, this is the gift of the Kumano Kodō; an opportunity to walk through frustration, to let it go or practice moving your mind on to other things.
There is a time for walking but also for resting, and we enjoyed a perfectly timed day off in Yunomine Onsen, a quaint village with a steaming geothermal river running through. There’s nothing like the pungent, sulphuric scent of Rotorua to make Kiwis feel at home, and we cooked eggs in the river and experienced, with some trepidation, the shared onsen at our guesthouse. Onsens are separated by genders, and with strictly no togs or tattoos, our teenagers used them after 9pm when they were guaranteed solitude.
That being said, meeting travellers along the way was another joy of the walk. In Chikatsuyu, we had beers with the fit-looking guys from the start of the trail, who were from the Czech Republic. A decade earlier, one was paralysed in an accident in Costa Rica and had only begun walking two years prior, and he wasn’t the only walker who had a fascinating story to tell.
We enjoyed the ancientness of the hike, stopping at the ruins of old tea houses where pilgrims rested for over four hundred years. We didn’t enjoy the five-kilometre climb on the last day, Dogiri-zaka (translated alarmingly as “body-breaking slope”). An 11th-century poet, Fujiwara Teika, wrote that it’s impossible to describe how tough it is. If a poet can’t, I won’t try. But reaching the top, after hundreds of stone steps, we felt invincible. What else could we do together? We’d left the Daru well behind.
Despite the challenges, reaching Nachisan did bring a sort of sadness as we finally gazed up at the orange pagoda temple and across to the 133-metre Nachi-no-Otaki falls, hungry and tired but chuffed. We didn’t see Mamushi snakes or bears, but nobody complained of boredom. As Edmond Hillary said, we’d knocked the bastard off.
The writer booked with Australian based online hiking travel agency, Hiking Trails, which provides self-guided itineraries, accommodation and support | hikingtrails.com.au
Tips for hiking the Kumano Kodō trail
The writer received support from Hiking Trails.