Nepal flags off team to remeasure Everest's height

An expedition team, assigned to remeasure the height of the world's tallest mountain peak, left for Mount Everest on Wednesday.

Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli called upon the government-nominated climbers to derive the true height of the peak. "It will be the authentic data regarding the height of the tallest peak once you come up with the report," Oli told the team members at the Prime Minister's Office here.

Nepal accepts the altitude of the mountain peak at 8,848 metres, measured by the Survey of India in 1954, according to officials of the Department of Survey of Nepal.

According to the department, four government officials -- Khimlal Gautam, Rabin Karki, Suraj Singh Bhandari and Yuvaraj Dhital -- are among members of the expedition team, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Nepali government's efforts to remeasure the height of Mount Everest comes amid speculations that it shrunk after the 2015 earthquake. Although expedition teams from various countries measured the altitude and produced diverse results, Nepal never became part of those expedition teams.

China, which first measured the height of the mountain in 1975 and reassessed it in 2005, reported the rock base of the peak at 8,844.43 metres with 3.5 meters of snow.

Mount Everest is known in Nepali as Sagarmatha and in Tibetan as Chomolungma.

It was given its official English name, Everest, by the Royal Geographical Society in 1865, upon a recommendation by Andrew Waugh, the British Surveyor General of India. Waugh named the mountain after his predecessor in the post, Sir George Everest, despite Everest's objections.

--IANS

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