Kathmandu/Beijing, Dec 8: The world’s highest peak is now taller by 86 centimetres, Nepal and China jointly announced on Tuesday after they remeasured Mt. Everest at 8,848.86 metres, over six decades after India conducted the previous measurement in 1954.
The revised height of Mt. Everest puts an end to the decades-long dispute between the two neighbours on the height of the world’s tallest mountain that straddles their shared border.
The exact height of Mount Everest had been contested ever since a group of British surveyors in India declared the height of Peak XV, as it was initially called, to be 8,778 metres in 1847.
Mt. Everest stands on the border between China and Nepal and mountaineers climb it from both sides.
Mt. Everest known as Sagarmatha in Nepal while in China it is called as Mt. Qomolangma, the Tibetan name for the world’s highest peak.
The Nepal government decided to measure the exact height of the mountain as some geologists suggested that there might have been some changes due to various reasons, including the devastating earthquake of 2015.
Mt. Everest’s revised height was officially announced by Nepalese and Chinese foreign ministers at a special virtual event.
“This is a historic day. The new height of Mt Everest is 8,848.86 metres,” Nepal’s Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali said while making the much-awaited announcement.
According to the measurement done in 1954 by Survey of India, the height of Mount Everest is 8,848 metres. The widely accepted height of 8,848 metres or 29,028 feet was determined by the Survey of India in 1954 from Bihar using the trigonometric method. (PTI)
