Nepal has sent a survey team for the first time to measure the world's highest peak Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest).
The project comes after the beginning of a new financial year following Nepal's government two-year project to survey the highest summit.
Deupty Director General of Department of Survey (DoS) under the Ministry of Land Reforms and Management Kalyan Gopal Shrestha told that this is just the first phase of the leveling survey.
"We are only conducting a labeling survey. The project is for two years and only after the reports of the survey we might go further into the measurement of the peak," he said.
"We have set our campsites in three points around the base of the summit. And this is only an internal preparation for the measurement," he said.
The three points are Namche, Taksindu and PK2.
The measurement work will begin taking the Kolkata port of India as the sea level for the measurement and is expected to be completed within two years, according to the Ministry of Land Reform and Management.
The decision to measure Mt. Sagarmatha comes in an effort to ascertain the height of the mountain on Nepalese side which has been in disagreement several times it had been measured in the past.
Rajaram Chhatkuli, surveyor general at DoS said, "Nepal has to take the initiative and ascertain the height so that we can ourselves officially declare the height."
In the past, only international surveyors had measured the height of the peak.
Mt. Sagarmatha was recognized as the world's highest peak in 1808. In 1856, the mountain was officially stated to be 8,840 meters. The height of Mt. Sagarmatha has been mentioned as 8,848. 13 meters in the Nepal-China border treaty.
Although not officially accepted, in 1999, an American team recorded the height of Mt. Sagarmatha through GPS technology as 8, 850 meters.
In 2005, China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping officially announced the height as 8,844.43 meters.
More than 5000 people have ascended the summit after the first successful climb of Tenzing Norgay Sherpa and Edmund Hillary to the top. Nepal's Tenzing Norge Sherpa and Edmund Hillary of New Zealand were the first to reach atop Mt. Sagarmatha on May 29, 1953.
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