A visit to Kyoto is not complete with checking out the famed bamboo forest of Arashiyama, a short 30 minutes away from Kyoto station. We visited the bamboo grove 12 years ago, and were fortunate enough to get some lovely pictures. Since that point, there has been a ton of pictures on travel sites showing how crowded the area has become, with throngs of visitors along the pathway, many armed with selfie sticks. Pretty scary.
We were determined to avoid crowds, which meant that we’d have to visit the grove well before everyone else does. We’d initially scheduled a visit for Day 05 morning, but ended up moving it to Day 06 morning. Our fingers were crossed by the time we arrived at 7:15AM – and as luck would have it, there was only a small handful of other visitors besides us, and among them, just one other foreigner.
The walking path itself that cuts through the bamboo forest isn’t very long: there is a gentle slope around the middle of it. But if you are just walking the path and not exploring the park beyond that, the path itself will take just 10 minutes of leisurely walking. And this time round, we managed to get several pictures of the early morning sun shining through the forest.
Definitely a must-do for visitors to Kyoto: the grove is easy to get to, and there is no admission fee.
Continued in the next post!