Eight of the World's 14 Highest Peaks Touch Nepal, and Only Three Sit Entirely Inside It

Most travellers know that Nepal has Everest. Fewer realise how much of the world's highest ground the country holds. Eight of the fourteen eight-thousanders, the peaks above 8,000 metres, are in Nepal. Where exactly they stand on the map is the surprising part.

Three inside, five on the line

Dhaulagiri I, Manaslu and Annapurna I are wholly inside Nepal. The other five straddle a frontier. Everest, Lhotse, Makalu and Cho Oyu sit on the Nepal-China border, and Kangchenjunga sits on the Nepal-India border. The remaining six eight-thousanders are elsewhere: K2, Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I and II and Broad Peak are in the Karakoram, and Shishapangma is in Tibet.

How far above 8,000 metres?

The gap between the biggest and smallest is larger than the raw heights suggest. Measured by how far each rises above the 8,000 m line, Everest is nearly ten times higher than Annapurna I.

A decade of firsts

The first eight-thousander anyone ever climbed was one of Nepal's. On 3 June 1950, Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal of a French expedition reached the summit of Annapurna I without supplementary oxygen. It is also the only 8,000-metre summit reached on the first attempt. Both men survived, but they lost fingers and toes to frostbite. Nepal's ruling Ranas had only recently begun letting mountaineers in.

Once the door opened, the rest followed quickly: Everest in 1953, Cho Oyu in 1954, Makalu and Kangchenjunga in 1955, Lhotse and Manaslu in 1956, and Dhaulagiri in 1960. Eight summits in ten years, all on one small country's map.

You will notice that some of them are open to you and some are not. Cho Oyu shares a border with Tibet, and climbers who normally use the Tibetan side have been funnelled into Nepal, as we reported when Cho Oyu and Shishapangma closed again this autumn. Manaslu, one of the three wholly Nepali giants, also had a difficult September, covered in our story on the washed-out Manaslu trail.

Next steps

To walk around one of Nepal's own eight-thousanders, look at the 14-day Manaslu Circuit, or the shorter 9-day Annapurna Base Camp trek, which climbs into the sanctuary beneath Annapurna I. For a remote border giant, our 22-day Kanchenjunga Base Camp trek goes to the third-highest mountain on Earth.

Sources: Wikipedia, Eight-thousander (peak heights, locations and first ascents); Wikipedia and mountaineering histories of the 1950 French Annapurna expedition.

Cover photo: Bijay Chaurasia via Pexels (Pexels License).