Mount Everest aka: Chomolungma, Sagarmatha

I absolutely do not want to climb Mt. Everest. I just want to see it – from the bottom. I think it would be an amazing sight and I would love to see more of the culture and people.

I like adventurous and exciting trips. So this is it~ =)

I visited Mt. Everest last summer with my father and brother. We came from the Tibetan side and had spent several days traveling there by 4×4. Its a long, bumpy, and treacherous ride. You’d think that some of the road would be well maintained considering a good deal of it is Tibet’s only highway to Nepal, but when we were the Chinese Government was finaly paving the one-lane road. They had hired local Tibetans to build the road, but they hadn’t been given any training so they were causing more damage to the road than they were fixing. Hopefully the road will hold up until those of you that want to go get the chance. It’s really stunning up there, almost heavenly. It was really a once in a lifetime experience.

...for standing among giants.

The highest point I reached was Kala Patthar which, at 5545m, overlooks Everest Base Camp. Turning around and seeing some of the highest mountains in the world still towering thousands of metres above me was most humbling. It’s one of those memories that will never fade.

In the early 1960s, the Nepalese government realized that Mount Everest had no Nepalese name. This was because the mountain was not known and named in ethnic Nepal (that is, the Kathmandu valley and surrounding areas). The government set out to find a name for the mountain (the Sherpa/Tibetan name Chomolangma was not acceptable, as it would have been against the idea of unification (Nepalization) of the country. The name Sagarmatha (सगरमाथा, Sanskrit for “Head of the Sky”) was thus invented by Baburam Acharya.

In 2002, the Chinese People’s Daily newspaper published an article making a case against the continued use of the English name for the mountain in the Western world, insisting that it should be referred to by its Tibetan name. The newspaper argued that the Chinese name preceded the English one, as Mount Qomolangma was marked on a Chinese map more than 280 years ago.