According to the statisticians we went down by 650m and up by 950m. According to my legs and lungs we did double that as the cool of the morning was spent going down and the heat of the afternoon was spent going up. Though trekking etiquette forbids such discussion I think is fair to say we each of us found the second day more challenging than the first.
We are at a tea house in Tatopani and arrived here just after the sun dipped behind a mountain casting a cooling shadow over the village. The dining room has a powerful log burner in the middle which meant the evening was cosy and there's no need for inches of goose down.
Tomorrow we should touch the 3,000m contour before descending again but these seesaw days of ascent and descent will benefit us when we finally strike up the Langtang Valley aiming for a ceiling of 5,000m.
This afternoon was relatively unshaded as the forests have largely been felled. The roads that zigzag their way up these hills are adding to the erosion and transforming these villages. Chinese produce fill the tea hoses. Everywhere there are massive hydroelectric power stations being developed. The roads that support these carve their way up the hillsides too and one day vast amounts of electricity will flow down the valley.
Several times our trail was diverted by earthquake damage but the villages seem to be intact although there is construction work going on everywhere.