CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Hashimoto it runs 256 km to Hashimoto; allow about 4 h 45 of riding. The stops in between: Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K, Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi and back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
A hunter with two dogs, according to the legend, is why Koyasan exists. When the monk Kukai, later called Kobo Daishi, returned from studying in China in the early ninth century, he threw a ritual three-pronged object into the air and asked it to land on a site for a mountain monastery. He found it hanging in a pine tree on a high plateau in the Kii mountains, and there he met a hunter, the god Karibamyojin, who led him to the place with his dogs. The hunter's mother, the goddess Niutsuhime, is honoured at the shrine that guards the approach. Kukai founded his monastery in 816, and Koyasan has been the headquarters of Shingon Buddhism since.
Read the complete Kôyasan - Niutsuhime-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kôyasan - Niutsuhime-jinja is where the day begins. Next is Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K.
Mount Kōya is one of Japan's great sacred places, a high basin in the mountains of northern Wakayama where the monk Kūkai founded a monastic centre for Shingon Buddhism in the early ninth century. Today it is a town of over a hundred temples, many of which take in overnight guests, set among towering cedars. South of the summit plateau, deep in the forested ridges, run the old pilgrim trails that link Kōya with the Kumano shrines, part of the network inscribed by UNESCO as the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K comes up about 45 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi.
The Ômine Okugakemichi is not a road at all, at least not one you can ride. It is a mountain trail that runs for about a hundred kilometres along the spine of the Ômine range in the Kii peninsula, linking Yoshino in the north with Kumano in the south, over peaks, ridges and rock faces. For more than a thousand years, yamabushi, the mountain ascetics of the Shugendo tradition, have walked it as a spiritual practice, combining Buddhist, Shinto and older mountain beliefs, with rituals at sacred rocks, waterfalls and cliffs along the way. It is part of the UNESCO-listed Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range, inscribed in 2004.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 114 km into the recorded legs you reach Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi. Next is back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K, late in the day. Next is Kôyasan - Niutsuhime-jinja.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kôyasan - Niutsuhime-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Kôyasan - Niutsuhime-jinja. That is the ride.
Kôyasan - Niutsuhime-jinja → Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K → Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi is 69 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi → back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K is 96 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K → Kôyasan - Niutsuhime-jinja is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.