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 Sakurai it runs 258 km to Sakurai; allow about 4 h 44 of riding. The stops in between: Kurizuka Kofun, Kôyasan - Jison-in, Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K and back through Kôyasan - Jison-in. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Sitting in a quiet field in Asuka is a carved piece of granite that has puzzled people for centuries. Sakafuneishi, the sake boat stone, is a granite block about five metres long, with a shallow basin and a channel cut into the top, and it looks like a boat, which is where the name comes from. It was carved in the seventh century and probably belonged to a ritual or water-related setting, perhaps used for purification ceremonies or for the supply of water in a nearby garden or palace. Nobody knows for sure, and that is part of its appeal.
Read the complete Sakafuneishi Ritual Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sakafuneishi Ritual Site is where the day begins. Next is Kurizuka Kofun.
South of Nara city, the plain is flat and green, with rice paddies in every direction and low, rounded mountains standing on its rim, and the first Japanese states grew here. Kashihara, on the southern side of the basin, sits near the old capitals of Asuka and Fujiwara, where the court and the first lasting Buddhist temples took shape in the sixth and seventh centuries. Kurizuka is one of the many kofun, ancient burial mounds, scattered around the district, and it is a modest, tree-covered hump rather than a spectacular monument.
Read the complete Kurizuka Kofun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kurizuka Kofun comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kôyasan - Jison-in.
Before you ride up to Mount Koya, the great mountain monastery of Shingon Buddhism, stop at its doorstep. Jison-in sits in the Kii river valley at Kudoyama, below the mountain, and it was founded by Kukai, the monk also known as Kobo Daishi, in the early ninth century as the administrative office and supply base for the new monastery above. Its most loved story concerns his mother. Women were barred from Koyasan for over a thousand years, so she lived here, and tradition says Kukai walked down nine times a month to visit her. That, the locals will tell you, is where the name Kudoyama, nine-times mountain, comes from.
Read the complete Kôyasan - Jison-in write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 77 km into the recorded legs you reach Kôyasan - Jison-in. 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, about halfway. Next is back through Kôyasan - Jison-in.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kôyasan - Jison-in write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kôyasan - Jison-in sits at 140 km, about halfway. Next is back through Kurizuka Kofun.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kurizuka Kofun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kurizuka Kofun comes up about 231 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sakafuneishi Ritual Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sakafuneishi Ritual Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sakafuneishi Ritual Site closes the day.
Sakafuneishi Ritual Site → Kurizuka Kofun is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kurizuka Kofun → Kôyasan - Jison-in is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kôyasan - Jison-in → Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pilgrimage Routes - Kumano Sankeimichi - K → back through Kôyasan - Jison-in is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kôyasan - Jison-in → back through Kurizuka Kofun is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kurizuka Kofun → Sakafuneishi Ritual Site is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.