54 Fun Facts About Himalayas

Mount Everest, once called Peak XV, is named after George Everest, who held which post in India?

Surveyor General of India was his post from 1830 to 1843, yet he said his own surname as EVE-rest, unlike the mountain named for him.

What does the Sanskrit name Himalaya mean?

Abode of snow joins Sanskrit hima, snow, and alaya, abode, yet the climate at the range's base is tropical.

Which five countries do the Himalayas span?

Nepal, India, China, Bhutan and Pakistan share the range, and in 2008 China closed Everest's north side to other climbers while its team carried the Olympic torch to the top.

Which TV survivalist reached the top of Mount Everest in 1998, aged 23?

Bear Grylls made the climb after breaking his back in a parachuting accident in Africa while serving with the SAS.

How did Chipko protesters stop loggers felling Himalayan forests?

Hugging trees was the tactic, and the protests led Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to ban felling in Himalayan forests in 1980.

Which long-haired Himalayan herd animal has much larger lungs and heart than lowland cattle?

The yak's big lungs and heart suit thin air, but with almost no working sweat glands it struggles to thrive at lower, warmer altitudes.

Before reaching the top of Everest in 1953, Edmund Hillary earned his living in New Zealand as what?

A beekeeper by trade, he kept bees in summer and climbed in winter, and later built schools and hospitals for Sherpas through his Himalayan Trust.

Sherpa comes from Tibetan words meaning what?

People from the east is the meaning, and the word has travelled so far that aides who prepare world leaders for summit meetings are now called sherpas.

In 1975, who became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest?

Junko Tabei was buried by an avalanche at camp on 4 May 1975, yet 12 days later she stood on the summit with her Sherpa guide.

Which mountain range to the northwest, home to K2, is generally considered separate from the Himalayas?

The Karakoram gave K2 its name: Thomas Montgomerie tagged the range's peaks K1, K2 and onward, and K2 was the second one he measured.

Which Jon Krakauer book recounts the deadly May 1996 storm on Mount Everest?

Into Thin Air grew from an Outside magazine assignment on paid guided climbs, but Krakauer joined a guided team himself and survived the storm.

The rock salt sold as pink Himalayan salt is mined in which country?

Pakistan's Salt Range, where the salt is dug, lies south of the Himalayas rather than within them, yet the pink salt still carries the range's name.

Why do villagers in Ladakh build tall cones of ice known as ice stupas?

To store water for farming, the cones freeze winter stream water that would otherwise go unused, then melt when crops need it and streams run dry.

The eastern side of Kangchenjunga, the world's third-highest mountain, lies in which Indian state?

Sikkim was a kingdom ruled by its chogyal kings until 1975, when the monarchy ended and it became a state of India.

Why did the 1955 first ascensionists of Kangchenjunga stop just short of the true summit?

Out of respect for local beliefs, Joe Brown and George Band halted a few metres below the top of a mountain that people there hold sacred as a home of gods.

In 1968, which band travelled to Rishikesh, in the Himalayan foothills, to study meditation?

The Beatles studied at the Maharishi's ashram, but Lennon left disillusioned and turned his guru into the target of the song Sexy Sadie.

As of 2025, which mountain is regarded as the world's highest unclimbed peak?

Gangkhar Puensum, Bhutan's highest peak, turned back early expeditions, and in 1994 Bhutan banned climbing peaks above 6,000 metres.

Which sacred mountain is revered by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Bonpo alike?

Kailash draws pilgrims on a circuit of about 50 km around its base, which Hindus and Buddhists walk clockwise but Bonpo walk counterclockwise.

Which city has the largest metropolitan area in the Himalayas?

Kathmandu saw parts of its centuries-old temples collapse, including at Durbar Square, when the April 2015 earthquake struck central Nepal.

Which hill station served as the summer capital of the British Raj?

Shimla drew the British with its cool mountain climate, and for decades the government of British India ran the country from there each summer.

Which glacier in Uttarakhand is the source of the Bhagirathi River?

Gangotri ends at Gaumukh, a snout said to resemble a cow's mouth, which Hindus revere as where the Ganges begins.

News of Everest's first ascent reached London on which royal occasion?

Coronation Day, 2 June 1953, brought the news, and within a week Hillary and expedition leader John Hunt were knighted.

Because it holds so much ice, the Himalayan region is nicknamed what?

The Third Pole holds more ice and snow than anywhere after the Arctic and Antarctic, and it feeds 10 major rivers.

India's oldest national park, in the Himalayan foothills, is named after which hunter and writer?

Jim Corbett won fame shooting man-eating tigers, yet the park named for him became the first to come under India's Project Tiger.

Which large lake straddles the India-China border at the far western end of Tibet?

Pangong Tso is salty, yet it freezes over in winter.

In 1965, climbers working with the CIA left what near the top of an Indian Himalayan peak?

A nuclear spy device, meant to pick up signals from Chinese missile tests, was left behind when a storm forced the climbers down, and searchers never found it.

Which Nepalese region, sheltered by the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri massifs, gets only about 300 mm of rain a year?

Upper Mustang, once the Kingdom of Lo, was forbidden to foreigners until 1992, so few outsiders had ever seen its villages.

The rain shadow of the Himalayas is believed to help create which Central Asian deserts?

The Taklamakan and the Gobi are famous deserts, yet much of the Gobi is bare rock rather than sand.

Besides helping it balance, how does a snow leopard use its long tail?

As a blanket, the tail gets wrapped around the cat's body, holding in warmth against the severe mountain chill.

Which Himalayan animal's males grow long, fang-like tusks?

The musk deer has these tusks instead of antlers, and males are poached for a musk pod that perfumers prize.

Which animal feeds in the bamboo understorey of the eastern Himalayan forests?

The red panda was once grouped with the giant panda, but it is now placed in a family of its own, apart from the bears.

Nepal's intoxicating Himalayan cliff honey comes from bees feeding on which flowers?

Rhododendrons put a toxin in the nectar, and an ancient king's forces reportedly used such honey as a weapon against Pompey's Roman soldiers.

Which comic-book hero crosses the Himalayas searching for a friend and meets a yeti?

Tintin finds his friend Chang alive in a yeti's cave, and the Dalai Lama later presented the Light of Truth Award to the Hergé Foundation for the book.

The yeti's Western nickname was coined in 1921 during which expedition?

The British Mount Everest reconnaissance found tracks its Sherpa guides blamed on a wild man, and a translation of their Tibetan name for it became the nickname.

Which 1933 novel introduced Shangri-La, a hidden paradise in Tibet?

Lost Horizon so inspired Franklin Roosevelt that he named his presidential retreat Shangri-La, which Eisenhower later renamed Camp David.

Tibetan Buddhists believe that spinning a prayer wheel has the same effect as what?

Reciting the mantras inside it is what each spin counts as, so some wheels are hooked to waterwheels or windmills to keep them turning nonstop.

Which Sherpa mountaineer became one of the first two people to reach the summit of Everest in 1953?

Tenzing Norgay ran away from home as a teenager and settled in Darjeeling, where he found work as a porter on Everest expeditions.

Who led the French expedition that made the first ascent of an eight-thousander, Annapurna, in 1950?

Maurice Herzog paid for the summit with frostbite so severe that he lost toes and fingers to amputation.

Which animal, herded on Ladakh's high Himalayan plateau, grows the fine fibre used for pashmina?

A goat grows this fibre, and Kashmir shawls made from it became so fashionable in Europe that weavers in Paisley, Scotland, copied them.

Who first climbed all fourteen eight-thousanders, finishing in 1986 without bottled oxygen?

Reinhold Messner later turned to politics, serving from 1999 to 2004 as a Green member of the European Parliament for Italy.

Which peak, the ninth highest on Earth, is nicknamed the Killer Mountain?

Nanga Parbat had killed more than 30 people, starting with the pioneer Albert Mummery in 1895, before anyone reached its summit.

Which Austrian made a 1953 first ascent in the Himalayas, going alone for the final 1,200 metres?

Hermann Buhl survived a night alone near 8,000 metres without shelter, and got back to camp 41 hours after setting out.

What did Didier Delsalle do the day after touching his helicopter down on Everest's summit in 2005?

He landed on Everest again to prove the first touchdown had not been luck, even though conditions on that second day were much harder.

Why is Lhotse the least prominent of the eight-thousanders?

The high South Col links it to Everest, and climbers heading for Everest's top ascend the steep Lhotse Face to reach that col.

In Hindu tradition the Himalayas are personified as Himavat, father of which goddess?

Parvati, his daughter, married Shiva, and in the best-known legend she shaped Ganesha to guard her door.

Which Bhutanese cliffside monastery is held to be where Padmasambhava founded Buddhism in Bhutan?

Paro Taktsang is said to be where Padmasambhava landed on a flying tigress, and a fire destroyed its main building in 1998.

What do mountaineers call the altitudes above 8,000 metres on peaks such as Everest?

The death zone has too little oxygen to sustain human life, and within hours a climber’s body starts to deteriorate.

Who set the 2023 speed record of 92 days for climbing all fourteen eight-thousanders?

Kristin Harila did it with Tenjen Lama Sherpa on her second try, after China's COVID-era limits on entering Tibet had halted her 2022 bid.

Which remote lake in western Nepal is Nepal’s largest?

Rara is Nepal’s biggest lake, and when a national park was created around it in 1976, two villages on its shore were moved to the lowlands.

Which climber vanished near Everest's summit in 1924, leaving a mystery over whether he reached the top?

George Mallory's body was found in 1999, but the camera that might have shown whether he reached the top was not with it.

Which ancient ocean closed as the Himalayas were raised?

The Neo-Tethys closed, and because continental crust resists sinking beneath another plate, the squeezed rock was forced upward into peaks.

Which hilltop palace in Lhasa was the Dalai Lama's winter residence?

Potala: in 1959 the 14th Dalai Lama slipped out of Lhasa in disguise and fled across the Himalayas to India.

What is Mount Everest called in Nepali?

Sagarmatha: the historian who put the name in print in the 1930s wrote that he was charged with insulting the British, yet Nepal later made it official.

Which goose is famous for migrating over the Himalayas?

Bar-headed goose flocks shun the strong daytime tailwinds up the Himalayas and climb in still night air, crossing in a single day.