Mar 30, 2009

Henro Pilgramage distance

People have been asking me how far Ian and I walked during our 18 days on the road. I just added up the total number of steps that I took, based on my daily notes and found that I took 521,882 steps. According to my normal walking pace, this means that we traveled 375 kilometers. However, when we were climbing the steep mountain trails between temples #11 and #12, I found that the recorded number of steps did not convert into the distance that we had traveled according to the map. The number of steps produced only about half of the map distance. Ian and I talked about it and decided that the problem was that so many steps were essentially vertical, with only a very small horizontal component, that they did not register on the pedometer. This appears to be the explanation because I tested it by counting steps on a short but very steep trail and found that the pedometer registered many less steps than my count. Considering the various paths we walked on, I guess that we actually walked 10 to 20 more kilometers

According to one of the guide books that I bought, the total distance between temple #1 and #30 is 321.5 km. The extra distance comes from such things as our walking around in the temples, looking for stores and restaurants, sightseeing, and going to and from the places we stayed.

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