Records & People

Mount Everest Is Still Growing — and a Hijacked River 47 Miles Away Is Pushing It Up

A 2024 study in Nature Geoscience found the world's tallest mountain gains roughly 2mm a year from an ancient river 'piracy' event on top of the…

By Laxman Rawal · Aug 29, 2026

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Key facts Everest's official height, jointly surveyed by Nepal and China, is 8,848.86m (29,031.7ft) , announced 8 December 2020. A 2024 study in Nature Geoscience found Everest is rising an extra ~2mm a year on top of normal tectonic uplift. The cause: a…

Travel Himalaya Nepal · News

The river that stole a river

About 47 miles from Everest, the Kosi River network intercepted and absorbed a tributary called the Arun River — a process geologists call 'river piracy' or 'river capture'. Suddenly carrying far more water, the merged river system began cutting down through…

Travel Himalaya Nepal · News

How much of Everest is a river's doing

The team modelled the erosion and rebound and concluded the effect has added somewhere between 15 and 50 metres to Everest's height over the past 89,000 years, and is still adding roughly 2mm a year — on top of the uplift already caused by the Indian tectonic…

Travel Himalaya Nepal · News

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