For thousands of years, a venerated Shinto Buddhism shrine in the Kii mountain range of Japan has been a place to visit for millions of pilgrims. All levels of society, including retired emperors and aristocrats, have made the walking journey to this shrine. The walk itself was an integral part of the pilgrimage process as they undertook rigorous religious rites of worship and purification. These pilgrims used a network of routes, now called the Kumano Kodo, which stretched across the mountainous Kii Peninsula in Western Honshu. In 2004, the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage routes were registered as UNESCO World Heritage, and a twinning program [...]

 These boots are made for walkin' but six days on the Camino de Santiago was more than just a walking vacation!   "You’re going to walk 75 miles on your trip to Spain, what kind of vacation is that?" That’s just one of the many “concerned” responses I would get before heading out to northern Spain to finally get a chance to do a long-distance walk on perhaps the most popular pilgrim path in the world; The Camino de Santiago. The Camino de Santiago, otherwise known as “The Way of St. James” or more simply “The Way” is an ancient [...]

There's something incredibly humbling about hiking on a trail of original Inca stone from 500 years ago. Most people don't know, but along the way to Machu Picchu, there are several Inca ruins to walk around and explore. Some were places of worship and sacrifice, some were agricultural terraces and some were Inca "hotels" of sorts for people making the journey from Cusco (the epicenter of the Inca empire) and the Sacred Valley to the mysterious city of Machu Picchu. We hiked through cloud forests, saw hundreds of varieties of orchids and other spectacular flora and fauna, got rained on [...]