Hakone! Most exciting place to visit

This Place we visited,Hakone was very exciting,Read on to see why.

First of all Hakone is a Valley surrounded by mountains.It is located amidst Jungle,transportation facilites are made so well,trains buses to reach respective destinations.

Here’s how sight seeing at Hakone started for us.There is no direct train to Hakone, we have to reach odawara(station)first.We travelled to Odawara in the bullet train(its called Shinkansen), we reached odawara in less than half an hour,which would have otherwise taken more than on hour through normal trains.

At odawara Station, You get something called Free pass,Does’nt mean its free,It only means no matter how many rides you take at hakone,its free.You have to pay for the free pass.

We have to then take a train to Hakone-Yumoto from odawara,you need to keep the free pass handy,wherever asked that is the pass.After reaching Hakone-Yumoto station, we then need to stand in queue to take a uphill train to Gora.This train goes through the mountains covered by trees and plants,while travelling in this train you get to see colored leaves, and it gets colder as you reach up the mountain.From Gora we have to again board a Cable car to go higher up the mountain to another place called Owakudani.

Here at Owakudani is what is more exciting. We can walk up to a mountain that was known for Volcanoes.We can see and breath sulphur dioxide gas coming out from the mountain surfaces and the water that flows here on the mountain is hot water mixed with sulphur dioxide and the soil and rocks that you see in and around mountain are the eruptions from volcanoes.t is believed here that if you eat eggs boiled in the water(Hot water that contains sulphur dioxide) on mountain,You live longer,almost everybody who travels up to this mountain,never comes back without eating egg boiled in water flowing on mountain. Aravind had my share of long life :).We met few Indians on the mountain,they were from Mysore,staying here in Tokyo from long time,They knew Japanese very well.

Guess what’s next,Its the Gondola lift on the ropeway. The one in hakone has a Guinness World Record for being “busiest gondola lift” for the largest number of paid passengers (2,010,059 persons) in FY2008 (accounting year).There are stations for the ropeway lift to drop and pick people from one source to another and then final destination.

Lift picks us up from Owakudani and takes you to next station where we get to see a huge lake(lake Ashika) surrounded by mountains. We can go for ride in small boats or a big cruise(ship).It was very cold, we took a ticket for first class seat in the cruise as it was crowded in economy class. We reached on the top of the cruise..cold,very cold breeze,I was freezing so was Aravind.we had some coffee in the cold breeze enjoying the beauty of Nature around.Finally cruise drops you to a place where we can board the bus to respective destinations. It was a lovely view on the way back to our station.Unfortunately on the way back,since it was a weekend, it took more than 3hrs to cover 25kms to reach odawara station because of heavy traffic.Hence it is better if travelled over weekdays,else be prepared to stand in long queues.