21 ADVENTURES BIG TRIPS FOR THE YEAR AHEAD

JAPAN

1 WALKING THE KUMANO KODO

Follow the ancient pilgrimage path that cuts through the silent, mossy mountains of Kii, south of Kyoto, to discover Shinto shrines, steaming hot springs and sacred waterfalls — a landscape where nature, body and spirit commune in harmony. Words: Aaron Millar

The Shugendo monk stands on the last summit ridge of the Kumano Kodo and blows his Hora conch shell to the wilds. He’s dressed in immaculate white Suzukaki robes, straw sandals and a woven cypress Minachi-gasa hat. The sound is earthy, like an animal call, but hollow, too, like wind passing through the forest. He’s a Yamabushi, a holy man of the mountains. The sound lasts only an instant, but I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.

I’m here to walk the Kumano Kodo, a 54-mile path that cuts through the Kii Mountains of Japan, south of Kyoto. This network of pilgrimage trails has been walked for thousands of years, by emperors and peasants alike, to make offerings at the three Grand Shrines of Hongu, Hatayama and Nachi along the way.

But this isn’t your average boots-in-the-dirt hike. This is the land of Shugendo, an ancient off-set of Buddhism which holds that enlightenment is to be found through physical excursion in the natural world.

“You do the training,” Ryoei Takagi, a Shugendo master, would later tell me, “until nature and your body and your heart are all mixed together into the same thing.” And when that happens, practitioners believe, you’ll also be granted magical powers.

It might just work, too: experienced Yamabushis, like Ryoei, have been recorded meditating under the freezing waters of the Nachi Otaki, Japan’s largest and most sacred waterfall, for up to 45 minutes at a time. Most of us wouldn’t last a minute. If there’s such a thing as hiking Nirvana, the Kumano Kodo is it.

I begin in Takijiri-oji, the gateway shrine to the sacred lands of Kumano, and hike for three hard days to the first Grand Shrine, Hongu Taisha. It’s like entering a living museum. I pass monoliths etched with mantras, statues of dragons covered in moss and small wooden shrines where sutras (sacred scriptures) written by emperors are buried underneath.

“Enlightenment is within us already,” Ryoei told me. “You just have to make space to feel it.”

The going is steep and hard, long cobbled paths winding through dense bamboo forests. But it’s tranquil, too. The region is known for its hot springs, and each night after I stumble into one of the small local guest houses, or ryokans, which are spread out among the villages that dot the trail, I collapse into one, soaking tired legs and breathing hot steam.

After the Hongu Grand Shrine, a mountain complex of stark red temples with curved cypress bark roofs, golden lanterns, prayer flags and monks bowing in devotion, it’s two more days in the forest to Yunomine, the 1,800-year-old hot spring thought to be the oldest in the country.

And it’s a hot spring with a novel dual purpose. As I stop for a rest, beside a bubbling well in