The World's Highest Mountains: The Himalayas and Mount Everest

The Roof of the World: Himalayan Giants

The Himalayas—a 2,400 km arc across Asia—contain all 14 of Earth's peaks above 8,000 meters (the "eight-thousanders").

Mount Everest (Sagarmatha / Chomolungma)

• Elevation: 8,848.86 m (29,031.7 ft) – latest 2020 China/Nepal survey.
• Location: Border of Nepal (Khumbu) and China (Tibet Autonomous Region).
• First ascent: 1953 – Edmund Hillary (NZ) & Tenzing Norgay (Sherpa).

Other 8,000m Peaks in the Himalayas

• K2 (8,611 m) – Karakoram (Pakistan/China) – "Savage Mountain."
• Kangchenjunga (8,586 m) – India/Nepal.
• Lhotse (8,516 m) – Everest's neighbor.
• Makalu (8,485 m), Cho Oyu (8,188 m), Dhaulagiri (8,167 m), Manaslu (8,163 m), Nanga Parbat (8,126 m), Annapurna I (8,091 m), Gasherbrum I (8,080 m), Broad Peak (8,051 m), Gasherbrum II (8,035 m), Shishapangma (8,027 m) – Tibet only.

Geological Context

• Formed by Indian Plate colliding with Eurasian Plate (~50 Ma, ongoing).
• Uplift continues ~5 mm/yr; seismically active.
• Source of 10 major river systems (Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Mekong…) sustaining 1.5+ billion people.

The Himalayas are not just the highest mountains—they are the planet's "Third Pole," water tower, and a living laboratory of continental collision.