Mount Koya on foot · Mount Koya on foot
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Mount Koya on foot
Mount Koya on foot
Before the train and cable car connection, which was built in the early 20th century, the only way to reach Mt. Koya was via the ancient pilgrim trail called the Chōishi-michi (町石道) which is still maintained and marked with stone pillars every chō (about 108 meters) - these have given the trail its name. It begins in the town of Kudoyama (九度山), which is a stop on the Nankai train line to Mt. Koya, at the (rather interesting in itself) Jison temple (慈尊院). To reach the temple from the station follow the main road downhill and across the bridge keeping an eye out for the green signage on the left. Note that free detailed English and Japanese hiking maps are available from Jison. If you want to do the Japanese thing, you can pick up a souvenier stamp rally card too - note the 7th and final stamp can only be obtained during business hours.
The trail is about 22km long, ascends about 700 meters (most of this in the first and last quarters) and can be walked in about 7 hours plus resting time, offering a very rewarding hiking experience. In reality, you'll likely want to take the side-detour roughly 1/3 of the way up, adding a third world heritage site on to your journey as well as an extra 2-3km depending upon approach. Local signage claims there is guest house accomodation at this point but this is unconfirmed.
Fire is prohibited, but there is nothing stopping you from camping in one of the observation huts along the way. In fact, like many such huts in Japan, locals have stashed a couple of ground mats in the rafters of one roughly 2/3 of the way up, just past the Yatate Jaya Teahouse.
You can also ask the resident monk at Jison if you can camp on the grounds, if you want to get an early start; there is a little graveled area, just beside the toilets, on which he'll probably let you sleep.
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Mount Koya Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
