Update: In the last episode, wear and tear took their toll on the writer as he struggled to reach Temple 18, at one point having to abandon his walking companions to reach the temple by taxi. As they finally arrived, Sibley felt ashamed. He should have walked with them regardless.

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The morning we left Minshuku Chiba - my sixth day on the Shikoku no Michi - it was raining. Not just a sprinkle or a drizzle, but a heavy-duty, coming-down-in-buckets, Noahic downpour. It lasted most of the day. Only a couple of minutes down the road and I was soaked head to toe, bemoaning my fate and wondering when I would find a vending machine to buy a can of hot Georgia Café au Lait.

The trail from Onzanji - the 18th of the 88 temples on the Shikoku pilgrimage route - cuts across a flat landscape of rice paddies, vegetable farms, hothouse farms and small villages until, just before Temple 20, it starts to climb. My companion, Shuji Niwano, a 63-year-old from Tokyo, who was walking the temple route with his son, Jun, had made reservations for the three of us at the Ryokan Kanekoya in Ikuna, a hamlet at the foot of a mountain about three kilometres below Temple 20.

I had met Shuji and Jun three days earlier at Temple 9, and they had invited me to walk with them. I was glad of the company. Jun�s language lessons - we would swap English and Japanese words for things we saw as we walked - allowed me to learn more about Japan than would otherwise have been possible, while Shuji�s willingness to make reservations on my behalf made it easier to find lodgings and meet other Japanese pilgrims. But I also had the feeling that Shuji had adopted me, as it were, for other purposes, the nature of which I was not yet sure.

On this day, we intended to drop our bags at the ryokan, climb to Kakurinji Temple, and return to our lodgings. All together it meant about 20 kilometres of walking; say, five hours, excluding time spent at the temples. It ended up being a nine-hour day that left us chilled and exhausted. After a few kilometres, I felt the bandages and moleskin on my feet coming loose and curling behind my toes, exposing the blisters on the soles. By the time we had walked the four kilometres to Tatsueji, Temple 19, I was limping badly. I noticed Jun was, too.

Despite my self-pity, I could still admire Tatsueji with its impressive halls, neatly trimmed gardens and handsome statues of Kõbõ Daishi and Kannon. Even in the rain, the temple has an air of prosperity. Which struck me as bit odd given that Temple 19 is known as a "barrier temple," a psychological boundary that a pilgrim must cross in order to continue the pilgrimage. Here, pilgrims are judged by Buddha and Kõbõ Daishi as to whether they are worthy of their spiritual quest.

If a pilgrim can honestly tell himself that he is walking for spiritual motives and has no fear about what is to come, he has passed the test. I�m not sure I passed. I was faltering, both physically and psychologically. The afternoon became one long slog. At a convenience store, I bought a plastic rain suit, but it didn�t do me any good. The plastic didn�t breathe and I soon felt I was walking in a portable sauna, unsure if I was wet from rain or sweat.

The hike from Temple 18 to 23 is about 55 kilometres, no great distance. But the trail crosses two mountain ranges and requires arduous walking for two or three days. The greatest challenge, however, is psychological. By the time you reach Temple 18, you�ve been walking for nearly a week and the strains on your body - blisters, aching legs and strained back, for starters - begin to take their toll. You become aware of what it really means to walk the Henro Michi (as the purists prefer to call the Shikoku no Michi): That you still have 70 temples and 1,300 kilometres to go, that it can rain for days on end and there is always another mountain to climb.

Suddenly you slam up against a mental barrier, asking yourself: "why am I doing this?" and "what�s the point?" Your mind scurries for an escape. What you imagined would be a stroll along country lanes, an intoxication of cherry trees in blossom and panoramic vistas of misty mountains to inspire the spirit has instead become a wearying, purposeless march of blistered feet, aching legs and soggy clothes. And it only promises to get worse: When - or if - you reach Temple 23, you face a three-day, 75-kilometre trek to Temple 24. I had read that many walking pilgrims decide to pack it in by the time they reach Temple 23 in the coastal town of Hiwasa.

I had done enough long-distance hiking to expect this psychological barrier. Still, it was depressing. Rain had become the enemy, mud a hateful presence and the mountains a curse. I was no longer on a pilgrimage but on an endurance course. I was angry, resentful of the Shikoku no Michi and the suffering it imposes. But I also knew you can�t walk for two months filled with resentment. You can�t rise at dawn every day and walk 20 or 30 kilometres if it fills you with dread.

The secret is to walk the pilgrimage in your head rather than with your legs. You let the pilgrimage walk you. Stop seeing it as something to endure or overcome, a challenge to be mastered, a confrontation between ego and world. The Henro Michi has existed for more than 1,000 years and it will exist long after you�ve disappeared. Your ego, that fantasy of yourself as the centre of the universe, must humble itself before that which it cannot control. No excuses, no complaints, just walk. In short, you have to disappear.

Of course, denying the ego, especially its propensity for self-pity, is not easy. Still, my internal monologue on pilgrim psychology carried me through the day. I put one foot in front of the other, swung my walking stick with reasonable rhythm, ignored the rain slithering down my back, let the blisters blister. When we stopped for lunch, I changed my wet socks and bandages. It didn�t do much good, but I took some relief in knowing that my feet looked no worse.

When the rain came down hardest, ricocheting off the asphalt to form a knee-high mist, we found shelter where we could - an empty warehouse, the eaves of a house, a bus stop. In the middle of some rice field or along a riverbank trail, when no shelter was to be had, we just got wetter. Eventually, soggy and sore, we reached our ryokan by 2 p.m. But the day wasn�t over. We still had the climb to Temple 20, Kakurinji, Crane Forest Temple.

The hike to Kakurinji would have been hard even in good weather. The temple is on the summit of a mountain 550 metres above sea level. We followed the course of the Katsuura River until the trail started to climb through groves of orange and cherry trees. The wind and rain had stripped the cherry trees of their blossoms, covering the path with pink petals. It was pretty but made the trail treacherous. Our boots and pants were soon covered in blossoms from slipping and sliding in the muck.

Along parts of the trail, generations of pilgrims had pounded the path to bedrock, forcing us to climb through narrow gullies that had filled with a fast-flowing stream. When we weren�t splashing through water we waded in mud. We stopped repeatedly to clean the globs from our boots, which transferred more pink blossoms to our pants and jackets. By the time we passed the two snarling niõ statues guarding the gate to Kakurinji, we must have looked like a trio of demented clowns. It had taken two hours to climb four kilometres.

Set amidst a forest of cedar and cypress, Kakurinji is quiet and spacious and redolent with age. The temple, founded by Kõbõ Daishi in 798, has been used to train Buddhist priests for more than 1,000 years. The main hall dates to 1600, and the three-storey pagoda was rebuilt in 1837. I admired the two almost nine-metre tall bronze cranes on either side of the steps in front of the hõndo, or main hall. The crane, a symbol of long life and good fortune, is the national bird of Japan.

When we left, I stopped at a pair of carved wooden cranes that stand in front of the giant straw sandals hanging on the niõ gate. The crane on the right had its mouth open, while the one on the left had its mouth closed. They were saying "ah" and "um," the two sounds that symbolize the beginning and the end of the universe. Together, the sounds create the mantra "aum" - the sound of the cosmos, according to Buddhist doctrine. The cranes were studded with one-yen coins that pilgrims had jammed into cracks in the wood, offerings for a long and prosperous life. I inserted three coins, thinking of my wife and son, as well as myself.

Happily, it took only an hour to descend the mountain. And, wouldn�t you know it, as we did, the rain eased to provide a pleasant end to an otherwise miserable day. Where we had climbed in mist and fog, we saw panoramic vistas of terraced valleys and blue peaks. We walked through an orange grove where a murder of crows feasted on mandarins that had fallen to the ground. The birds were loud and raucous, almost intoxicated, as they gorged. The air was laden with the smell of shredded fruit.

I was soaking in the o-furo of the Ryokan Kanekoya within minutes of checking in. Soothed by the steaming water and an easy-on-the-eyes rock garden through the window, I tried not to think about that day or the days to come. The wooden cranes popped into my head, and I remembered as a university student in Victoria spending a spring break at a Buddhist retreat where I was taught to meditate while chanting "aum." I hadn�t thought of that retreat for nearly 30 years. But in the o-furo, with only the drip of water to disturb the silence, the memory blossomed: the mothball smell of the cushion, the aching thigh muscles from sitting in a half-lotus position and the haunting mantra echoing in the dim-lit room. I tried uttering the mantra for the first time in decades. It sounded strange.

I mumbled the mantra the next day as we trekked to Tairyuji, Temple 21. It wasn�t deliberate. My mind had unexpectedly tuned into some cosmic radio station and "aum" was number one on the hit parade. At first, it was annoying, but after a while I surrendered and chanted along - "aum, aum, aum" - until, just as suddenly, the station faded out. It was like that for most of the morning and, oddly enough, I found that concentrating on the mantra helped me cope with the never-absent pain in my feet.

When I got out of bed that day, I noticed that my legs weren�t as stiff and sore as they had been on previous mornings. My feet, though, were another matter. For the first three days of my walk, they had been fine, sore but blister-less. By the fourth and fifth days, walking from Temple 13 to Temple 18, I had acquired nasty sets of blisters on both feet. I had performed the requisite on-the-road surgery of lancing the blisters with iodine-soaked thread, but even as old blisters drained and began to heal, I was getting new ones - blisters on blisters. Only the layers of moleskin and plaster made walking endurable. Even so, by the end of the day, I was hobbling rather than walking. Any sudden jarring or awkward movement, such as slipping on a rock or pounding down a slope, sent shards of pain lancing through my feet. I was beginning to wonder how much more of this I could take.

We were aiming to reach two temples, Tairyuji and Byõdõji, Temples 21 and 22, by the end of the day - a distance of about 25 kilometres all told. The first stands at an elevation of 618 metres, which explains why Ed Readicker-Henderson refers in his guidebook to Tairyuji as "a test of the henro�s dedication and stamina." I passed, but barely.

Happily, the second temple is on the outskirts of Aratano, a country town on the banks of the Kuwano River. We trekked around a mountain and crossed the Naka River and began the climb to Temple 21, the Great Dragon Temple, one of the most beautiful on the Shikoku route. While yesterday�s rain had surrendered to sunshine, the trail remained slippery and treacherous, although it didn�t seem so at first.

We walked in green-tinted sunlight along narrow country lanes that wind above ravines rushing with spring runoff. The air was cool and sweet with cedar. As we climbed, the lane became a path cutting into a valley with tree-slopes closing in on us. Buttercups, violets and wild iris lined its edges. The valley narrowed into a gorge that gradually sank into the ground until we were traversing a trench, so deep in places I could brush my hands along the wet, mossy rocks and bulking roots that protruded from the earthen walls. If I had not been able to see the slit of sky above me, it would have been easy to believe I was walking underground. I thought of the millions of pilgrims who had walked here before me, each generation digging the trench at little deeper with their passing.

The path to Tairyuji was steep. By the time we reached the temple my legs trembled and threatened to seize up. I felt faint. I saw spots before my eyes and found a bench to sit before I fell. I lowered my head between my knees. I waited, imagining my 52-year-old body pitching face forward on the white gravel walkway, felled by a heart attack. But after a few minutes, focusing on my bootlaces, my eyes cleared and the nausea passed.

Shuji and Jun hovered nearby. They, too, were tired, but they waited to see if I was all right. When it appeared I wasn�t going to pass out, Jun handed me a bottle of Pocari Sweat. I thanked him and swallowed most of icy lemony-drink on the first tip. I had consumed three bottles of water during the climb, but, judging by my wet clothes, I had sweated it out. I suspected I was dehydrated. I assured them I just needed to sit for a while. Satisfied, Shuji went off to perform the rituals at the hõndo and daishidõ, while Jun sat dozing on a nearby bench. I skipped the rituals and settled for having my visit recorded in the nõkyõ-chõ and listening to the cosmic radio station play "aum." I told myself Kõbõ Daishi would understand. After all, he�d climbed this mountain himself in his search for enlightenment, and maybe he was hearing things too by the time he got to the top.

Tairyuji, founded in 789, is one of the few Shikoku temples where there is definite evidence of Kõbõ Daishi�s presence. In one of his books, the Sango-shiiki, he refers to the months he spent at the temple chanting a mantra one million times, hoping for satori.

"I diligently practised the Buddhist way in the mountain of Tairyu-ga-dake," he wrote. "The valley reverberated to the resounding echoes of my recitation until the morning star Venus appeared in the sky."

One time, as legend has it, Kõbõ Daishi threw himself off the mountain, believing that if he was fated to be a religious leader, the Buddha would save him. Buddha did. I wasn�t tempted to try the same test on myself.

Tairyuji is a lovely temple. Surrounded by a forest of huge cedars, the temple compound, with its weatherworn halls, moss-draped statues and pathways shaded by cherry trees, felt secluded and unworldly. The bench where I sat was on a gravel avenue lined by a row of ancient cedars. In front of me, built into a rock face, was a set of stairs that climbed to the main hall and the daishidõ and the two-storey Taho-to pagoda. In the middle of the steps was the shõrõ gate, or bell tower. I pushed to my feet and climbed to ring the bell. It didn�t hurt to remind the gods that I was still here.

When we descended Tairyu mountain for Aratano, we did it the easy way. A kilometre from the temple is a cable-car system - the Japanese call it a "ropeway" - that drops down the mountainside to the town of Wajiki. It is the longest ropeway in western Japan, plunging 422 metres over a distance of 2,775 metres. The view was spectacular - forest-thick mountain peaks rolling away to the blue horizon - and when we got to the bottom, only 10 kilometres remained to walk to Temple 22, Byõdõji, on the outskirts of Aratano.

It was a pleasant walk despite the pain in my feet. We rambled along a series of mountain ridges that looked down on copses of grey-green bamboo. The trail eventually plunged into the bamboo forests. It was lovely: the smooth celadon trunks swayed overhead in the wind, the slender new leaves pale green against the sky. My mental radio tuned in again and I was aum-aumming as I walked.

Compared to two days of climbing mountains, those last few kilometres to Temple 22 were a stroll in the park. Still, by the time we reached Byõdõji late in the afternoon, I was dragging with fatigue and my feet felt as if someone was taking perverse delight in testing the sharpness of knitting needles. Shuji and Jun were exhausted, too. Jun limped as he walked. As soon as we performed the temple rituals and had our record books stamped, we limped up the street to the Minshuku Zazanaka.

It was a homecoming of sorts. Sayama-san, the retired banker from the city of Sendai, and Takashi-san, the vacationing businessman from the island of Hokkaido, whom we hadn�t seen since the previous morning, had arrived an hour earlier. Sayama-san was sitting on a chair in the dining room inspecting his feet. We also met Tomatsu Hasegawa, a pilgrim from a town near Tokyo. He was a metallurgical engineer for Toyota. I guessed him to be in his 30s. He was walking as much of the Shikoku no Michi as he could during a month-long vacation.

Supper that night turned into a celebration. We were all buzzed by a combination of relief, fatigue and anxiety. There was only Yakuoji, Temple 23, to reach before we left Tokushima Prefecture and entered Kõchi Prefecture, the second leg of the pilgrimage.

Tradition says that Tokushima, with its 23 temples, was the province where pilgrims become aware of their spiritual longings. In Kõchi, with its 16 temples, we were supposed to be engaged in ascetic discipline. The consensus around the table was that if we thought the first part of the pilgrimage had been hard, just wait for Kõchi. After the evening meal, we sat in the dining room drinking Kirin beer, watching sumo wrestling on television and comparing blisters. We all had blisters, although I seemed to possess the worst batch. Hasegawa-san, offered me strips of the adhesive tape with which he wrapped his feet.

I noticed that Jun had gone to bed. Usually, he wanted a language lesson after supper. I asked Shuji if Jun was OK. He shook his head. I caught the word tsukareta, or tired. He was worried that Jun was showing signs of flagging. I remembered how important this pilgrimage was to Shuji, and I resolved to do what I could to help him encourage Jun.

Two local men came into the dining room, which, as I soon gathered, was also the neighbourhood nawanoren, or bar. After being introduced, Iwano-san and Sigeno-san insisted I share their bottle of sake. They wanted to know what a gaikokujin, an out-of-country person, was doing on the Shikoku no Michi. Was I a Buddhist? Did I know about Kõbõ Daishi? Did I perform the Hannya Shingyõ, the most popular of the Buddhist sutras, at the temples? I tried my stock responses: I was a journalist, a jãnarizuto, and that I worked for a nikkan shinbun, or daily newspaper, in Canada; I was interested in Japanese culture; and I liked long-distance trekking.

Hasegawa-san, who spoke English well, came to my rescue, translating my pidgin Japanese. We finished the sake bottle with them offering a toast and wishing me "gambatte kudasai" - "do your best" - the standard greeting among pilgrims. When I tried to pay for my share, they waved me off, saying "o-settai."

O-settai is the traditional practice on Shikoku in which locals offer hospitality to pilgrims - everything from gifts of food and articles of clothing to free lodging and money. Pilgrims are duty-bound to accept the offering. During my pilgrimage, I would receive cups of tea, oranges, towels, free meals and, in a few cases, money. Once, a woman on a bicycle rode up to me, pulled a wallet from her bag and thrust 1,000 yen - about $12 - into my hand. And then she pedalled away without speaking. Behind the tradition of o-settai is the folk belief that the pilgrim might be Kõbõ Daishi, and it never hurts to side with the saints. As well, by giving o-settai, the person is vicariously participating in the pilgrimage.

The sake wasn�t my only o-settai that night. The okami-san, the lady of the house, noticed I was limping and insisted on inspecting my feet. She clucked her tongue and shook her head at the blistered, iodine-stained skin. She disappeared and returned with a pair of white socks that had separate sleeves for each toe in the same way gloves have separate finger compartments. I�d never seen toed-socks before, but, as I soon discovered, they were great for walking because the toes didn�t rub together. I would go through three pairs before the end of my trek. I thanked her and tried to pay for them but she refused, claiming "o-settai."

I bowed and raised the socks to my forehead in the traditional gesture for accepting o-settai. I also filled out an osame-fuda, a name-slip, and gave it to her, making sure to use both hands as I held it out. Okami-san laughed, surprised that I knew the proper etiquette for acknowledging o-settai. She took the osame-fuda and laid it at the foot of the Buddha statue in the small household shrine.

I took my socks to my room. It was only 8 o�clock, but pilgrims go to bed early, and I wanted to give my feet as much rest as possible. I was about to turn off the light when I heard tapping on the frame of the shõji.

"Dõzo," I called. "Ohairi kudasai." "Please, come in."

It was the okami-san. She was returning my clothes, washed, pressed and folded. I noticed in the morning that my bill didn�t include a laundry charge. More o-settai.

I didn�t know it then, but I would receive many more gifts in the weeks to come.