Kōyasan is a city in the sky. In 816 the monk Kūkai, known after his death as Kōbō Daishi, received permission from the emperor to found a monastery on a high, forested plateau in the Kii mountains, and from that start the settlement grew into the headquarters of Shingon Buddhism, with over a hundred temples tucked among the cedars. A few thousand people live in the town, and many of the temples take pilgrims and visitors as guests, serving a vegetarian temple meal called shojin ryori and waking guests for morning prayers. At the far end of the main street begins Okunoin, the great cemetery, where a two-kilometre path winds beneath tall cedars past tens of thousands of moss-covered gravestones to the mausoleum of Kūkai, who is believed to be in eternal meditation rather than dead.
The route that fits this point is the old pilgrimage path, the Choishi-michi. It climbs from the temple of Jison-in, by the town of Kudoyama, for about twenty kilometres, marked all the way by stone posts, one for every chō, about a hundred and nine metres, and a hundred and eighty in all. Pilgrims have walked it for over a thousand years, and today it is a good half-day walk through persimmon orchards and cedar woods. UNESCO listed the pilgrimage routes together with the Kii mountain shrines in 2004.
The road up by bike is a pleasure. From Hashimoto, the road climbs through cedar forest in a series of bends, with views over the valley of the Kino river. The plateau sits at around eight hundred metres, so it is cool when the lowlands bake, and it can be cold and foggy in autumn and snowy in winter, with ice on shaded bends. Spring blossoms are late, and the best time is perhaps October, when the leaves turn.
Hashimoto, with nearly sixty thousand people, is the place for fuel, and Kōyasan town has smaller stations. Book a temple lodging in advance, since there is little else to stay in, and leave your bike in the car park at your temple.
I find the cemetery the most moving place, with mist drifting between the cedars and lanterns lit along the path in the dark.