A few days ago, I wrote a post about traveling in the Sahara, the favored trip of my adult ESL students. One of the trips that caught my attention was the hiking to Mt. Fuji at night. The intention of this endeavor is to arrive by sunrise.
This travel experience is not a solo endeavor. The article in Budget Traveler mentioned the dozens of people who do the same thing. Mt. Fuji, considered to be sacred, is a bit of a poke from the bottom to the top, 12,388 feet, but it’s doable for even unseasoned hikers. Taking one’s time and drinking plenty of water are imperative and there are rest stops with shack like buildings scattered along the way where, if need be, you can lie down and rest.
The Budget Traveler article mentioned people buying oxygen bottles to help them breathe towards the top, but another article in the New York Times, a first person account, doesn’t say a thing about that. For a quick nuts and bolts overview of the trip up Mt. Fuji, head to Budget Traveler. For an experiential journey, Kathy Glass’s article in the New York Times captures the sites and feelings of the assent and descent, and some tidbits of Mt. Fuji history. For example, women weren’t allowed to climb the mountain until 1867. Her descriptions of interactions with the landscape and the people she met on the way is a read to savor.