Everest Region

Mount Everest is a Himalayan peak on the Nepal-Tibet border with an official height of 8,848.86 m. Nepal and China announced that figure together on 8 December 2020, settling a disagreement that had run for decades: the Survey of India measured 8,848 m in 1954, and a 1999 American GPS survey backed by the National Geographic Society argued for 8,850 m. Nepalis call the mountain Sagarmatha, “forehead in the sky”. To Tibetans it is Chomolungma, “goddess mother of the world”. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top on 29 May 1953.

Sagarmatha National Park protects 1,148 km² of the Khumbu and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. Roughly 6,000 Sherpa live inside the park, in stone villages set between 2,800 and 4,400 m. Their Buddhism is on every trail: prayer flags strung across the passes, mani walls you pass with the stones on your right, and the monasteries at Tengboche and Pangboche. Tengboche still blesses climbing expeditions the way it blessed the 1953 one.

Which Khumbu trek suits you? The Everest Base Camp Trek takes 14 days and is the busiest high-altitude trail in Nepal. It opens with the flight into Lukla, whose runway is 527 m long and cut at a slope into the hillside, then climbs through pine forest and yak pasture to the Khumbu Glacier. You cannot see the summit from Base Camp, because the west shoulder hides it. Almost everyone climbs Kala Patthar (5,545 m) at dawn for that view. Trekkers who want a quieter valley take the Gokyo lakes or join them to Base Camp on the Gokyo and Base Camp route, and the Three High Passes Trek links both over three crossings above 5,300 m.