Planning a day trip from Kyoto to the Kibune-Kurama hike in the day then end up at Kurama at 5pm for the fire festival in October.
The fire festival supposedly starts at 6pm and finishes around 8-9pm. From previous posts, my concerns are that the crowd management is poor. Also the wait time to board the train back to Kyoto is around 2-3 hours after the event has finished.
Im hoping to avoid the crowds as I am going with my parents who are not used to travelling. Do you think it’s possible to watch only a small part of the festival – maybe 2 hours of the festival until 7pm, then leave earlier and immediately train back to Kyoto? Or will the crowds move or push me too far away from the station to the point where I cannot get to the station early enough and will have to queue for the train? Previous posts have mentioned that police tell the crowds to “keep moving” towards a particular direction so I don’t want to end up too far astray from the station.
I just don’t want to wait 2-3 hours for a train so I’m happy to leave earlier. Or perhaps we shouldn’t go at all and substitute it with Arashiyama, which I have already been to (not much to do there imho)
by heirloom-tomatos