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.
The stops in between: Yoshino and Ômine - Kimpu-jinja, Kitora Mounded Tomb, Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama and Hinokuma-dera Temple Site. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
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.
Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi is where the day begins. Next is Yoshino and Ômine - Kimpu-jinja.
Mount Yoshino, in the mountains of Nara Prefecture, is famous throughout Japan for one thing above all: cherry blossom. Some thirty thousand trees cover its slopes, planted over the centuries as offerings, and each spring they bloom in waves from the lower slopes to the summit. Kimpu Shrine, Kimpu-jinja, stands near the top of the mountain, in the area known as Oku Senbon, the inner thousand trees, and it is part of the UNESCO-listed Sacred Sites of the Kii Mountain Range.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Kimpu-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yoshino and Ômine - Kimpu-jinja comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kitora Mounded Tomb.
Kitora is a small, round burial mound on a hillside in Asuka, the cradle of the Japanese state, south of Nara. From the outside, it looks like a grassy hump, unremarkable. Inside, when researchers inserted a fibre-optic camera in 1983, they found a stone chamber painted with some of the most extraordinary images in Japanese art: the four guardian animals of the cardinal directions, the black tortoise-snake of the north, the blue dragon of the east, the white tiger of the west and the red phoenix of the south, along with figures of the twelve zodiac animals with human bodies, and on the ceiling an astronomical chart showing the constellations, one of the oldest such star charts in the world. The tomb dates from the late seventh or early eighth century, and its occupant remains unknown. To preserve them, the paintings were removed from the walls and restored, and some are displayed at the Shijin no Yakata, a museum built next to the tomb.
Read the complete Kitora Mounded Tomb write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 57 km into the recorded legs you reach Kitora Mounded Tomb. Next is Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama.
Cherry trees are the whole point of Yoshino, and they are planted by the thousand up the side of a ridge in the mountains of Nara Prefecture, about five kilometres from the little town of Yoshino and an hour or two from Osaka. Over some three hundred years, pilgrims planted the sacred shidarezakura and the mountain cherry as offerings to the god of the mountain, and in the first half of April the slopes turn pink, white and green in four layers from the bottom to the top, a wave of flowering that rises up the hillside over about a fortnight.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama, about halfway. Next is Hinokuma-dera Temple Site.
Hinokuma lies on the western edge of the Asuka district, where the land begins to rise toward the Katsuragi and Kongō mountains. The name appears in early records connected with the imperial family and the old clans, and a temple, Hinokuma-dera, once stood here, close to the tombs of rulers of the sixth and seventh centuries.
Read the complete Hinokuma-dera Temple Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hinokuma-dera Temple Site sits at 77 km, about halfway. Next is back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama comes up about 122 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Kitora Mounded Tomb.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kitora Mounded Tomb write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 141 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Kitora Mounded Tomb. Next is back through Yoshino and Ômine - Kimpu-jinja.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Yoshino and Ômine - Kimpu-jinja write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Yoshino and Ômine - Kimpu-jinja, late in the day. Next is Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 201 km.
Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi → Yoshino and Ômine - Kimpu-jinja is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yoshino and Ômine - Kimpu-jinja → Kitora Mounded Tomb is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kitora Mounded Tomb → Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama → Hinokuma-dera Temple Site is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hinokuma-dera Temple Site → back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Yoshino and Ômine - Yoshinoyama → back through Kitora Mounded Tomb is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kitora Mounded Tomb → back through Yoshino and Ômine - Kimpu-jinja is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Yoshino and Ômine - Kimpu-jinja → Pilgrimage Routes - Ômine Okugakemichi is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.