The Kii Peninsula & Kyoto

Most first trips to Japan are Tokyo, Kyoto and a bullet train between them. This one keeps Kyoto and swaps the rest for the Kii Peninsula, where pilgrims have been walking to the Kumano shrines for the best part of a thousand years. The pairing works because each cures the other: Kyoto is dense and ornamented, Kumano is cedar, rain and silence. By day ten you will have stopped checking your phone, which is the real itinerary.

Mei would build the walking around you, not around the guidebook. Some people want the full three stages with a guide who knows which tea house does the good rice balls; others want one stage and a taxi to the next ryokan. Either is fine, and the route bends to suit. She would also check the calendar for you. Spring is the obvious choice, but October is quieter and the light is lower and kinder, and if a festival is running in Kyoto she will know whether it is worth joining or worth avoiding.

The accommodation is the other thing she would adjust. The temple night at Koyasan is a good idea for most people and a poor one for some: the futons are thin, the morning chanting is early, and the bath is shared. If that sounds like a stretch, she has a quieter lodging on the same mountain with better beds and a later start.

The honest trade-off is time. Fourteen nights allows the Kii Peninsula to breathe, but the transfers are long, and a part of day seven is spent on trains and a mountain bus rather than looking at anything. If you would prefer more Kyoto and less travel, we cut Kumano to a single stage and give you another two nights in the city. You lose the pilgrimage; you gain a slower breakfast. We will tell you which we would choose, and why.