Kumano Kodō — Japan's Pilgrimage Road Over the Mountains to Three Shrines

You walk a Japanese pilgrimage road people have crossed the mountains to travel for more than a thousand years. From the gate where you leave the everyday world for the mountains of the gods, to the hot spring where you wash yourself clean, to the heart where the pilgrimage first arrives, down the river to the sanctuary where it meets the sea, and at last to a waterfall honored as a god — you pass, one by one, five places on the way to the three grand shrines of Kumano.