The next chilly morning, we set out for the famed bamboo groove of Arashiyama. In my madness, I opted to wear only a hoodie over my shirt for the day and I somewhat regretted that by late afternoon. The sky was overcast and there were intermitent drizzles but the most important thing was: it was freakin' cold!
The bamboo groove lost much of it's lustre in the poor light but it still has a peaceful charm to it, coupled with the fresh mountain air. I was somehow pulled along to take the Sagano scenic train ride and because of the timing, we had to settle for seats in an open-air car (the misery from the cold doesn't end there) but the scenery was beautiful and somewhat well worth the money (and agony) spent. At the end of the ride, we spent quite some time taking pictures of a gorgeous field of flowers before the threat of rain forced us to move on. Onwards to the Fushimi Inari Taisha.
It was rather surprising to find a lack of people activity when we arrived at Fushimi station. It was lunchtime so we holed up at this small restaurant beside the station and had a pleasant meal (at a relatively cheap price too). The "legendary" trail of bright red Torii gates was a sight to behold but the climb up the mountain was not something for the faint-hearted. It is near impossible to even count the number of Inari shrines along the path and there were countless numbers bunched up together as well.
Due to the setting of the sun, we opted not to complete the trail. We decided to give the Miyako Odori a miss as we headed back to the hostel and started packing our bags. Time to move on to the next stop! An early morning bullet train took us to the city of Odawara and then a train ride to Hakone. It took some struggling to get our (more specifically, my) luggages onto the small buses before we reached our Ryokan. As it was not time for us to check in yet, we had our 2-day Hakone free pass (misleading name, it's not free and it's not cheap too) and headed out to Moto-Hakone and Lake Ashi, where I was hoping to at least catch a glimpse of Mount Fuji to make up for the disappointment of not seeing it on my first trip to Japan 2 years ago.
Alas, it was not to be as clouds obscured the great mountain from what would have been a vantage point from the Lake. The pirate boat ride was kind of uneventful (but cold nontheless). From Togendai, we took the ropeway up to the famed sulphur crevices of Owakudani (again not able to catch Fuji-san from the vantage point along the ropeway. The pungent smell of sulphur hit us the moment we got out of the building. As we walked up the trail, the sight of unmelted snow greeted us and as I stared out again into the distance, I was pleasantly surprised to finally see the faint snow-capped cone of the elusive Fuji appearing from the clouds. It just made my day there and then. The subsequent ride down the mountain via the cable cars and the Hakone Tozan railway were uneventful, saved for the observation that the sakuras have yet to bloom at heights of above 550m.
Having retired for the day to our room at the Ryokan, we soaked ourselves in the bath filled from the Natural Hot springs before retiring for the night and refresh ourselves for the last leg of our trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment