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Signature route ยท 10 days
The Nakasendo Traverse
Ten days along the old post road through the Kiso Valley, from timber villages to mountain passes and back down again.
10 daysRoad & gravelIntermediate+Private trip
Ten days along the old post road through the Kiso Valley, from timber villages to mountain passes and back down again.
The Nakasendo was one of five great roads of Edo-period Japan, the inland route connecting Kyoto and Tokyo through eleven post towns in the Kiso Valley alone. We follow it by bike: paved valley roads where the old road has become the new one, and on foot over the sections: Magome Pass, Torii Pass, where it never stopped being a mountain trail. Ten days, three of Kiso's best-kept post towns, and a lot of forest in between.
Land in the Kiso Valley and settle into Magome, the trip's starting post town, perched on a stone-paved slope with views out over the Ena mountains. A short shakedown ride through town to check bike fit, nothing more.
Walk Magome's cobbled main street after dark, when the paper lanterns come on outside the old inns.
The signature day: ten kilometres of the original Nakasendo post road, ridden and pushed in turns, over Magome Pass (790m) and down into Tsumago, one of the best-preserved post towns on the whole trail. Bamboo groves, terraced rice paddies, cedar forest, worn stone paving laid in the 1600s.
A short detour off the main path to Odaki and Medaki, the paired 'male' and 'female' waterfalls that drop side by side through the forest.
Out of the post towns and onto the Kiso River road, the riding opens up as the valley widens. The river turns jade-green through a gorge of smooth white boulders on the way north.
Stop at Nezame-no-Toko, the gorge said to be where the fisherman Urashima Taro woke from his years under the sea.
A longer riding day through hinoki cypress forest to Kiso-Fukushima, once the site of one of the four great checkpoints of the Edo-period Nakasendo, where every traveler between Edo and Kyoto was checked and logged.
Evening sake tasting at Nanawarai or Nakanorisan, the town's two working breweries.
A shorter, easier day: a loop up onto Kaida Kogen, an open highland of soba fields and grazing horses with Mt. Ontake filling the skyline.
Ride the Ontake Ropeway up to Iimori Kogen (2,150m) for a full panorama of the Northern and Central Alps.
Back onto the valley road, tracing the old Nakasendo alignment north through more cypress and cedar forest toward Yabuhara, the gateway to the day's big climb.
A quiet roadside shrine along the route, easy to miss if you're not looking for it.
The trip's high point, literally: a steady climb to Torii Pass at 1,197m, with the valley falling away behind you, before a long drop into Narai, 'Narai of a Thousand Houses,' the longest and best-kept of all eleven Kiso post towns.
Browse the lacquerware and wooden comb workshops along Narai's kilometre-long main street, a local craft tradition centuries old.
A lighter day built around Narai itself, with an optional loop out into the surrounding hinoki forest for anyone with legs left.
Watch a comb-maker at work, still using the same tools and technique the town has been known for since the Edo period.
Retrace the valley road south with fresh legs and a faster pace, the same river now familiar, a long lunch stop somewhere with a view.
A riverside onsen soak in Agematsu to finish the day's riding.
An easy closing spin back toward Magome and Nakatsugawa, the loop complete, before transfers out of the valley.