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.
A 254 km round trip from Kōya - roughly 4 h 59 in the saddle. On the way it passes 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. The line favours views over speed.
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.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Kôya Sankeimichi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pilgrimage Routes - Kôya Sankeimichi 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 44 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 113 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 Pilgrimage Routes - Kôya Sankeimichi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Kôya Sankeimichi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Pilgrimage Routes - Kôya Sankeimichi. That is the ride.
Pilgrimage Routes - Kôya Sankeimichi → Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K is 44 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 → Pilgrimage Routes - Kôya Sankeimichi is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.