I love adventure. I love exploring new places. I love immersing myself in other cultures. I love being outdoors. I love the feeling of being fit, of doing something good for my body. I love pushing myself to go beyond what I know and find what I am capable of.
I also love a soft bed, cleaning the grime off after a day of hard work, and eating a healthy meal I didn’t have to prepare. Which is why I’ve found that as far as a trekking trip goes, pilgrimages are my favourite. A goal, a pace you set yourself, a route to follow, opportunities for personal growth, and at the end of the day, indoor plumbing and all the comforts of home.
Two years ago, I completed the Camino del Santiago, also knows as the Sacred Way. The most popular route is the Camino Frances, starting in Saint Jean-Pied-de-Port. Total of approximately 800km (500 miles) – different sources give different distances, even the markers along the Way seemed to disagree with each other. While traditionally a religious pilgrimage, today many pilgrims, known as peregrinos, walk for fitness or personal growth. Exactly my kind of trek. The Camino is travelled mostly by foot, but bicycle and horse are also acceptable. Peregrinos number in the 1000s every year, from across the world. The route can be divided into three parts: physical as your body adapts to the rigors of hiking 20-30km each day; mental as you reach the Meseta – a long stretch of mostly flat sunbaked land; and spiritual as you reach the mountains of Galicia. I intentionally started the Camino alone. I can’t explain why, but it was something I knew I wanted to do solo, without my partner, without a friend. Trusting I would find any companionship I needed along the way. And in the end, my Camino experience was inexplicably tied to the people I shared it with. And while there were many friendships and acquaintances made along the way, there were five others who became my family. Who are still, several years later, still my Cam Fam.
It was one of my Cam Fam members who invited me to my second pilgrimage last month on the island of Shikoku in Japan. The route of the Shikoku pilgrimage follows in the footsteps of Kobe Daishi, founder of Shingon Buddhism in Japan. The current route includes 88 temples in a circuitous 1200km route around the island, though due to time constraints I only completed one third of it. It is still very much a religious versus secular journey. 90% of the Shikoku Henros (pilgrims) are Japanese, with foreigners in the minority, and a lot less of these than on the Camino. The route is divided into four sections, in alignment with the four prefectures travelled through: Awakening in Tokushima, Ascetic training in Kochi, Enlightenment in Ehime, and Nirvana in Kagawa. The destinations each day are not a particular town, but a particular temple. And at each temple has a ritual to be completed. The bell is rung, candle and incense lit, offering made (usually just a couple of yen), osamefuda left (this is a slip of paper with your name and address, and a wish/intention; the color of the slip indicates how many times you have made the pilgrimage), and prayer said. Traditionally it is the heart mantra to be repeated, but I admit the Shingon sounds were very foreign to my ears and I just could not get it memorized or even repeated with any fluidity, so I simply said a little prayer. This process is done first at the Main Hall, then repeated at Daishi Hall, for every temple.
Logistically, there were both similarities and differences between the two pilgrimages. The route for both is marked with arrows, yellow on the Camino, red for Shikoku. Aside from your personal needs, the requirements to identify you as a peregrino on the Camino are very simple. All you really need is a pilgrim “passport”, received when you register yourself for the walk. In order to receive your Compostela, your certificate saying you completed the Camino, you collect stamps in your passport. Most often these are done at the albergue you stay in for the night, but you can also get them from cafes along the way, or many of the churches you visit. Some of the stamps can be quite creative, a few even included stickers or baubles attached to them. Many people also adorn their packs with a scallop shell, the symbol of the Camino, to further identify themselves as a pilgrim.
The Shikoku Pilgrimage is a lot more intensive as to gear. While in the end, all that you really need is your “passport”, there is a lot more worn as identifying you as a pilgrim. The minimum identification is the wearing of a white hakui jacket or vest. It is this white clothing that most easily identifies you as a henro. Other options include the wagesa stole (which I opted out of), the zudabukuro bag (I used my own), the kongozue staff (which came in very handy on the mountain passes), and the traditional cone shaped sugegasa hat (which I gave up wearing on day 2 – it sat atop my backpack for the remainder of the trip) in addition to the candles and incense to leave at the temples. The passport itself is quite different, being bound, often in embroidered cloth, and resembling more of a journal than a passport. Stamps for Shikoku are done at the temple, after the ritual is performed you make your way to the stamp office. As with the Camino, each stamp is unique. It is a handwritten calligraphy, one stamp per page of your passport.
Lodgings along the Camino are primarily at Albergue, or hostels – communal living, your living space reduced to a bunk and maybe a cubby for your pack. Most of the time booking ahead was not needed, but there were certain times where I did book ahead, at a recommendation of other pilgrims or the guidebook. Meals were communal as well, a set price with 3 courses, and often the same offerings throughout the journey. A starter, a main, and a dessert, with water and wine included. The only thing not communal were the bathrooms, large locker room type arrangements, men’s and women’s. Included bathroom stalls, and shower stalls. Showers were often not temperature controllable – there was one knob to push, and water flowed for a small amount of time, then you pushed the knob again, much like a simple faucet as you might find at a public toilet.
On Shikoku, lodging is primarily small-scale homestays of various sorts. They are defined as guest houses, minshuku, or ryokan, ostensibly each being more traditional than the other, though honestly, I didn’t notice a consistent difference. A private room, with either a bed or a futon on a tatami mat floor. With or without a bean filled pillow, which took a little while to adjust to. Bathing facilities were a mix between private bathroom shared by all guests, and communal Japanese bath. In Japanese culture it is typical to sit for a shower, a plastic stool is provided for such a purpose. After a long day of walking this was one tradition I fully embraced! Not having to stand for my shower was absolute bliss. In the communal bath, there is a central soaking tub, and shower faucets around the perimeter. The soaking tub was much like a hot tub, and very welcome to sore muscles. I admit once I adapted to the nudity (luckily, I do not retain much of that inherent American puritanism) the communal baths were my favourite. Most of the lodgings offered food as an additional cost. Dinner and breakfast were traditional – lots of rice and fish. Booking ahead was required, as the spaces were quite small, often on 2-6 guests per lodging, and food prepared according to the number of guests. Usually one day ahead was enough, but if we knew our distances for a couple of days, we sometimes booked two days out. Booking was the most challenging part of the trip. Most of the places did not offer online booking, and many spoke no English. Helpful hosts would sometime be able to book your next day’s accommodation for you, which was wonderful.
There are also 13 temples along the way that offer lodging as well. We stayed at one temple during our trip, our first night, at Temple 6. Our experience there really set the tone for the remainder of our journey. After dinner was an ancestor honoring ceremony. We filled out an osamefuda with our name and address, and a kyougi slip with the name of an ancestor and date of death (or rough estimate). This slip was tied to a camphor branch, an evergreen, as it is believed the souls of your ancestors live in evergreen trees. We also wrote a wish on a wooden stick – not a wish for ourselves, but for others. The branch with the tag and the stick were tucked into a little paper carrier with a candle in a plastic cup. We carried the whole little package with us into the main hall for prayer. After the prayers we honoured the main deity of the temple and placed our osamefuda in the box. As we left the main hall, we lit our candles and placed them in a small stream as we recited a mantra. Then our kyougi and the camphor branch was planted in the sand, and our wooden stick was placed in the fire. Through Daishi hall to pray to the statue there before exiting the ceremony. I admit a lot of the significance was lost on me, as I was still learning the customs, but still an amazing experience to be in the halls of the temple.
For me, the Camino was less about the religious journey and more about the journey within. Where you are in your life will of course change the experience for each person. When I started the Camino, I was still in recovery. Recovery from my personal struggles, coming to terms with my current reality, so different from the one I imagined. I was newly divorced and dealing with a medical condition that effectively put my life on hold for a year. My ego was fragile, though my body was strong. The Camino was my chance to find peace within myself. To explore my own experiences through the sharing and listening to others. To learn that while our struggles are very personal, to struggle is not. It was the first time I truly became present. Nothing mattered beyond putting one foot in front of the other, finding a café for a meal, a bed for the night. The world beyond felt “other”. And in the present moment, all was well. Nevertheless, there were a few spiritual moments found along the Way. One was a small church in the village of Rabe de Las Calzadas, just west of Burgos. In this church were two nuns, one young, one very old, giving out Santa Maria medallions and blessings. The young nun was truly amazing. Even though there was a line of peregrinos waiting, when she was with me, I felt that she was truly with me, giving me her blessing, seeing me, and only me. It was a moment that has stuck with me forever since.
Another was at a place called Casa de Alma in Castrojeriz. It’s a private enterprise, set up by an amazing soul to give visitors a place to rest their souls, and operates purely on donation. The house has many nooks for reflection, meditation, or just to sit in peace and read. It is filled with artwork and quotations. The garden is full of aromatic plants and seating areas, and there are two caves in the back of the property, one with an altar. It was close to closing by the time I arrived, but even the 30 minutes I was there was enough to feel my soul was renewed, to feel the peace of the environment takes its hold within me. It made the town of Castrojeriz, even with the Albergue with no hot water, one of my favourite places along the Camino.
Shikoku is a much more solitary journey, simply because there are just less people. It was a great opportunity for my friend and I to experience a very different type of pilgrimage. And of course, we did meet people along the way, both locals and other henros, whose paths we would cross mostly at the various temples, occasionally staying at the same guest house. However only with one person did I really connect with, sharing contact information to keep in touch. She is part of a project to make Shikoku more available and accommodating to foreign henro. She also happened to have spent some time living in Washington, DC and was thrilled when I told her I had lived in Virginia to meet an East Coast American. Her help was invaluable in booking accommodations along the way, both in making phone calls for us, and suggesting places to stay. But though my interactions with others may have been fleeting, their impressions were not. Overall, I found the Japanese people to be some of the kindest I have met. On our first day, walking towards Temple No 1, a woman invited us in for tea. She is 82 and used to be an English teacher. She opens her little “office” twice a month to practice her English with foreign henro. She also gave us our first osettai, little gifts given to pilgrims. In addition to the tea, she gave us each a small handmade bag. After we outfitted ourselves at Temple 1, we both used the bag to keep our candles, incense and osamefuda together. It is still my favourite osettai I recieved.
As with Camino, days started early in Shikoku, with breakfast usually at 6:30am. But when staying near Temple 22, our day started even earlier. Our magnificent host drove us to the temple for the 6am meditation ceremony. It was a small service, just the monk, his acolyte, our host, and the two of us. The service consisted most of chanting mantras, and alternately ringing the large bowl and clasping large symbols together (which I’m sure could wake the whole village – the sound in the hall was deafening). The monk’s actions with the symbols were very ritualistic. He would uncoil the rope around each handle, place them together and roll the edge along the floor, before picking them up to clang together. Then placing them back down and recoiling the rope. Each time the same. The chanting was amazing; the sounds are unfamiliar, like a deep humming in the throat, resonating deep within me. As the ceremony ended and the sun began to rise over the mountain tops, I knew in that moment that I would return to Shikoku, to finish the pilgrimage, to fill every page of my passport.
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