Why we walk the Nakasendo uphill

The surviving stretch of the Nakasendo between Tsumago and Magome is walked by a few hundred thousand people a year, and almost all of them walk it from Magome to Tsumago, which is downhill.

The reason is the bus timetable. It has always been the bus timetable.

What you get for the extra hour

Walking north to south you climb out of Tsumago into cedar forest with the valley closing behind you. The stone paving arrives when your legs are warm rather than when your knees are tired. The rest house halfway up is somewhere to stop rather than somewhere you pass.

And you arrive in Magome in the late afternoon, on the upper street, with the whole Kiso valley opening out below you and the day-trip coaches long gone.

Downhill you spend the day leaving somewhere. Uphill you spend it arriving.

When we book it the other way

Knees, mostly. Descending 350 metres on uneven stone is harder on a bad knee than climbing it, and for some travellers the downhill direction genuinely is the right call.

The point is that it should be a decision. If your operator has never mentioned the direction, it is because they never thought about it.