The imperial pilgrimage route across the Kii mountains, walked as the pilgrims walk it: from Takijiri-oji by Takahara, Chikatsuyu and Tsugizakura to Kumano Hongu Taisha, inn to inn, with the buses at each end.
Best season: March to May and October to November. Open all year; spring and autumn are the popular seasons, the Tanabe City Kumano Tourism Bureau says, its autumn peak from September to November, though September is among the wettest months on its climate graph. Summer is hot, humid and wet, and typhoons bring floods and landslides: check the weather and ask your inn each morning. From late December to February the passes can have frost and snow, and the days are short. Before you go
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Five sections from Takijiri-oji to Kumano Hongu Taisha, a village with small inns at the end of the first three. The inns decide the plan: book them first.
Changing the pace or where you stay suggests a new number of days: the fewest that keep each day under 8 h of walking and in daylight, where a place to stay allows.
Days end where the route has a stay, a camp or a village.
Stage 1: A steep climb from the shrine through forest, past the Tainai-kuguri rock cave, to the hilltop village of Takahara: about 4 km, 2 to 3 hours and 430 m of climb. No bus reaches Takahara itself.
Takahara Town or village
A ridge-top village with a handful of inns, among them Kiri-no-Sato Takahara Lodge, which has a restaurant; KUMANO TRAVEL lists 8 places in Takahara itself and more in Kurisugawa below, a drive away, some with a pick-up. No bus reaches the village; Kurisugawa on route 311 is about 30 minutes down.
Find your own accommodation; TrailSplits has not checked what is open.
Stage 2: Over the ridges by Jujo-oji, a clearing where many stop for lunch, and the old teahouse site at Uwadawa-jaya (about 690 m), to the rest stop at Gyuba-doji-guchi (a restaurant, 9:00 to 17:00, closed Thursdays and 1 to 3 January) and down to Chikatsuyu: about 9.3 km, 3½ to 4½ hours.
Stage 3: Up from Chikatsuyu to Nonaka and Tsugizakura-oji, under its great cedars: about 4 km, 1¼ hours. Nonaka's inns lie around the shrine and below it.
Tsugizakura-oji Town or village
Nonaka, strung along the old road around the shrine and the Nonaka Ipposugi bus stop: KUMANO TRAVEL lists 11 places, nearly all with supper. The last beds before Hongu, apart from two in Fushiogami, about 3 km short of it.
Find your own accommodation; TrailSplits has not checked what is open.
Stage 4: The long day through the mountains, by Kobiro-toge and the Iwagami-oji stretch, reopened on 1 October 2025, to Hosshinmon-oji: about 13.5 km, 6 to 8 hours. No restaurants: bring lunch. From Kobiro-toge there is no water source until the vending machines at Hosshinmon-oji.
Stage 5: From Hosshinmon-oji by Fushiogami down to Kumano Hongu Taisha: about 7.5 km on the Bureau's section page, 6.8 km on its route map and on this line, 2 to 3 hours. A very popular walk on its own, by bus to Hosshinmon-oji.
Longest day: day 3, 8 h–11 h.
Days end at a stage end with a refuge or a village, or in a village the route passes through. Walking times are the Tanabe City Kumano Tourism Bureau's published times where it gives one, with our estimate beside it; a day that walks part of a stage gets a share of the stage's time by distance and climb. Running times use 7.5 km/h plus one hour per 700 m of climb: a steady reference, not a prediction. Daylight is sunrise to sunset where the day starts; the time left is for breaks, meals and delays. For villages we count the places to stay OpenStreetMap lists; we have not checked which are open. A plan is not a booking: reserve every night before you commit to these day lengths.
Loading the forecast for low point (85 m) and high point (700 m)…
Typical weather on this trail: at the lowest point (85 m) and the highest point (700 m). Select a month to see why it is rated as it is.
| Month | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weather | Mixed | Mixed | Good | Good | Good | Mixed | Mixed | Mixed | Mixed | Mixed | Good | Good |
| Stages rated good on typical weather | 0/5 | 2/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 | 4/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 0/5 | 5/5 | 5/5 |
| High point, day / night | 6°/-1° | 7°/0° | 10°/3° | 15°/8° | 19°/12° | 22°/16° | 26°/20° | 27°/21° | 24°/18° | 19°/12° | 14°/7° | 9°/1° |
| Low point, day / night | 10°/2° | 11°/3° | 14°/6° | 19°/11° | 23°/15° | 26°/19° | 29°/23° | 31°/24° | 28°/21° | 23°/16° | 18°/10° | 13°/5° |
| Rain, mm | 66 | 85 | 138 | 170 | 191 | 296 | 249 | 197 | 271 | 232 | 135 | 72 |
| Snow at high point | Possible | Possible | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | Frost |
| Daylight | 10 h 08 | 10 h 57 | 11 h 55 | 13 h | 13 h 53 | 14 h 23 | 14 h 12 | 13 h 27 | 12 h 26 | 11 h 24 | 10 h 26 | 9 h 56 |
Source: TerraClimate 1991–2020 monthly averages. Averages for the area at each point’s elevation (4 km grid, corrected for height). Not a forecast or a report of current trail conditions. Snow at the high point is estimated with a simple snowpack model from these temperatures and precipitation, not observed; steep islands and high summits can hold more snow than it shows. Daylight is for the 15th of each month. Hut, transport and park seasons are separate: check them for your dates.
Before you go
Arrange your stays, food and travel first, then check conditions again near departure.
Takahara, Chikatsuyu and Nonaka have limited beds, mostly small inns with dinner and breakfast, and they fill up in spring and autumn: the Bureau advises booking about six months ahead. Its KUMANO TRAVEL site stops taking bookings 20 days before the night, and a daily luggage shuttle carries bags between inns booked there. Aim to arrive between 15:00 and 17:00.
Stamp boxes stand at 18 points from Takijiri-oji to Kumano Hongu Taisha, and the credential is free. Walk this route and the Camino de Santiago and register at the Hongu Heritage Center or the Tanabe Tourist Information Center to become a Dual Pilgrim.
The Bureau: Dual PilgrimSummer is hot and wet, and typhoons bring floods and landslides: ask your inn each morning. Mamushi vipers, giant hornets, leeches and ticks live along the way; bears are rare, and the Bureau notes that the attacks in the news are almost all in northern Japan. Put rubber caps on walking-pole tips.
The Bureau: tips for walkingArrive between 15:00 and 17:00 and carry a light, the Bureau says; in December the sun rises about 6:55 and sets about 16:53. The last day to Hongu, 21 to 24 km and 8 to 12 hours with breaks, barely fits that daylight: start at first light, or shorten it by the 7:23 bus from Chikatsuyu-oji (7:29 from Nonaka Ipposugi) to Doyukawa-bashi (about 17 km from Hongu), as KUMANO TRAVEL suggests. From December to March the last bus from Hosshinmon-oji leaves at 14:48.
The Bureau: tips for walkingGetting there
Choose a stage or journey above to narrow the travel searches.
Google Maps journey searches, not confirmed services. A mountain endpoint may need a booked transfer or an additional walk.
The Bureau advises the night before in Kii-Tanabe: from Osaka or Kyoto on the day, even the earliest train and bus leave too little time to reach Chikatsuyu or Nonaka, so only Takahara is within reach, as in the 3-day plan. Buses from Kii-Tanabe station reach Takijiri in 36 to 38 minutes (¥970), from 06:16; in busy seasons the 08:30 and 08:37 fill up, so the Bureau suggests an earlier one. From 19 September to 10 December 2026 an extra express bus leaves Kii-Tanabe at 06:55 for Takijiri (07:27) and Hosshinmon-oji (08:54). A taxi is about ¥8,000.
The Bureau: busesBuses from Hongu Taisha-mae reach Kii-Tanabe in 1 h 35 to 2 h 10 (¥2,100), the last at 16:40; Shingu in 1 h 15 to 1 h 25 (¥1,560), the last at 18:58; and Yunomine onsen in 10 to 15 minutes (¥310).
The Bureau: busesTake your trip with you
Prepare every day while you still have a connection, and test it offline before you set out.
Keep your route and maps on your phone for places without a signal. For multi-day trips, prepare them in the installed TrailSplits app.
Saving a bookmark is not a map download. Storage can be cleared by your device; keep a backup map for remote trips.
Route & sources
The Tanabe City Kumano Tourism Bureau gives about 38 km from Takijiri-oji to Kumano Hongu Taisha (its route map of May 2026: 37.1 km), in sections that end at Takahara, Chikatsuyu, Tsugizakura-oji and Hosshinmon-oji. The line here is the route on OpenStreetMap (relation 17094646, planet of 21 September 2026), walked in the pilgrims' direction, 35.9 km, cut at those section ends. The times are the Bureau's section times, which include breaks; its difficulty table gives about 6½ hours of walking for the 21 km from Tsugizakura-oji to Hongu that its section pages put at 8 to 11.
Official guidance and mapped-source comparison checked 27 September 2026. Map data is a route reference, not confirmation of today's path, weather or accommodation availability.
Tanabe City Kumano Tourism Bureau: the NakahechiMap data © OpenStreetMap contributors · Source relation