To make up for yesterday's vicious climb, and to perpetuate our wild oscillation across the Himalayan landscape, we plunged 5900 feet to Birethanti (3400 feet).

Today's walk was fairly easy, taking less than six hours with plenty of rest stops, but we were constantly thankful that we weren't going the other direction. There were just as many horses today as there were yesterday, and we became even more confident about walking with them on the trail.

Another feature of the past few days has been a much larger number of water buffaloes along and on the trail. The cows here tend to have short horns that point forward, whereas the water buffaloes have longer horns that go back along their heads. They are very streamlined creatures without much hair, whose snouts are much higher in the air than those of cows. I imagine these are the features that make them well suited for swimming in the water (although for all I know they might not be able to swim at all). These water buffaloes are extremely large and slow moving and occasionally we must maneuver between them on the trail. Like all the animals here they are very docile, but if they swing their heads as you walk by you quickly remember how large they really are. Yesterday a girl we were walking behind was very surprised when a water buffalo (wo-bo) plunged down a steep portion of hill toward her (after being whipped by the driver). It seemed just as surprised as she was and stopped on a dime without coming too close.

The other remarkable thing today was an amazing stretch of stairs, descending from Ulleri. One trekker counted 3767 steps in this stretch. This is only a rough number however, for the number of steps varies widely depending on where you place your feet. Stairs here range from precise stairsteps as we know them, to sequential overlapped rocks with no horizontal coherence. In any case stairs tend to be easier than the alternative, and we were very glad that we were going down and not up.

We arrived at Birethanti fairly early in the afternoon. Early enough, at least, to go down to the river to wash our clothes for the last time on the trek. Only two more days and we will be at Pokhara.

Today's hotel was not the best in town, but the first one we came to. It was a bit nicer because it doesn't have the hordes of trekkers that are at some of the bigger hotels (only half a dozen here). Dinner was served all at once, but it wasn't very good. In fact, I'm still feeling a bit ill to my stomach. I sure hope it will pass during the night. Why get sick now? Good night.