Shikoku A Walk in search of the Essential

The Shikoku pilgrimage is a fascinating walk: eighty-eight Buddhist temples to visit, following a circuit of over one thousand, two hundred kilometres; forty-five days of walking; with more than one thousand, two hundred years of history behind it. They call it O-henro-san.
"While walking across the Japanese island of Shikoku over a two month period, I became quite convinced by one thing: I had found the one place where my spirit felt at home. From that moment, whenever I need peace and quiet, I mentally retrace my steps across the island. This is why I thought I'd invite readers of Shikoku A Walk in search of the Essential, to explore this magical place, in the hope that someone, somewhere might discover that it is their spiritual home, too", Paolo Calvino writes.
Shikoku is an otherwordly and ambivalent land: in Shikoku A Walk in search of the Essential, the author explains why go there, how and when the pilgrimage was created and developed, who the pilgrims were and are, and how they feel during the walk and at the end of it.
Useful information are provided, together with a list of free and cheap lodgings.

Auteur

Paolo Calvino was born in 1969 in Turin, Italy, where he lives.
At the age of six, he began browsing atlases and from then on he imagined a life of travelling. Up to now, his dreams have taken him to forty-nine countries of the world (fifty, if one is to include Kosovo). The first mode of transport he loved was by train, with which he has travelled many times throughout Northern Europe, the Balkans and Russia. A little before the age of forty he discovered how far one can actually go on foot: he has crossed northern Italy from national park to national park, completed the pilgrimage on the Japanese island of Shikoku, journeyed the Francigena Way, and followed the World War Two trails in southern Piedmont.
For the Neos publishing house editions, he has published In guerra non andare. Un viaggio in Etiopia dalla memoria alla scoperta (Don't Go to War. A trip to Ethiopia, from remembrance to discovery, 2019) and he contributed five stories to the anthology series Pagine in viaggio (Travel Pages) from 2018 to 2022.
He devised a thirty-day trek in southern Piedmont and wrote a guide-book about it, Il Cammino nella Resistenza (The Trail in the Resistance, Fusta Editore, 2021).