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How Mount Everest Was Made
Wednesday, March 30, 2005-10:45 PM
TIBETAN PRIMER: Practical information for first-time visitors to the Himalayan Kingdom
Forward:
Since I usually travel to places ignorant of local customs, history, and geography and consequently end up wasting most or all of my time trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing so I don't wind up going home and having to confess that I spent all my time wandering through industrial parks and eating fast food because I forgot my guidebook and the taxi driver couldn't understand anything I said, I decided to do a little research before visiting Tibet.
But, I tend to forget everything I read unless I highlight, underline, rewrite, and recite important passages and phrases. To the end, I've decided to publish all the information I gather here so that 1) I have better chances of retaining important facts 2) it's available to other people and 3) it's available to me in case I fail to retain or want to revisit some trivia I discovered either during or after my trip to Lhasa.
Michael Mooney
March 30, 2005
Dedicated to Richard Gere
PART 1: Raising the Roof: How Chomo-Lungma was made
Tibet covers an area of about 471,700 square miles (around 80% the size of Alaska ). The eastern part of Tibet is forest. The northern part is grassland. And the southern part (where Lhasa is) is the agricultural region.
Mount Everest lies near the border between Nepal and Tibet. The mountain (known in Tibet as Chomo-Lungma) was created by the collision between the Indian crustal plate and the Asian crustal plate. It's summit reaches 29,035 feet.
Most of Tibet is actually a plateau with an average altitude of around 13,000 feet. Lhasa sits on the northern bank of the Kyichu River. According to Yahoo, the average temperature there during May is between 40 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
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