Posts tagged "Himalayan Peaks"

Flying back to Delhi from Kathmandu I sat mesmerized as I watched clouds float far below the giant peaks of the Himalayas. It’s hard to consider these mountains without reflecting on the geology and wondering why almost all of the worlds tall peaks are in Nepal. The Himalayas are a result of the collision between the Indian plate and the Eurasia plate that began somewhere around 50 million years. The resulting mountains are an unprecedented landform both today and in terms of historical geology.  The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau combined are one of the most extreme expressions of mountain building on the planet in the last 500 million years.  Nepal is the place to go as it’s the present epicenter of this uplifting event and its home to 8 out of 10 of the world’s tallest peaks. The only other 2 peaks in the top 10 are in the Karakoram of Pakistan.  To be fair of these 8 peaks several straddle the borders of India and China but however you look at it Nepal has a clear claim to housing the greatest concentration of the world’s tallest peaks not only today but probably in the last hundreds of millions […]