7 highest countries of the world – global reading challenge

Into the Mountains....
The second task of the 7 Continents, 7 Billion People, 7 Books Reading challenge is to read a book from one of the 7 highest countries in the world. Following Wikipedia's List of countries by highest point, those 7 countries are:

• Nepal
• China
• Pakistan
• India
• Bhutan
• Tajikistan
• Afghanistan

After checking the map, it's easy to see that all of those countries belong to the Himalaya region:



Of course, it makes sense that the highest mountain range of the world is home to the highest countries. What you might not expect, though, is to find that 3 countries in this "highest" category also belong to the "most populated" category of the reading challenge: China, India and Pakistan. Especially as high regions aren't synonym for comfortable living: the higher the region, the more difficult to live there.

Book lists

• Goodreads features a list with popular Himalaya books
• And with a focus on country, there are extra lists of  books set China and books set in Nepal, and on the other countries, too, like books set in Pakistan etc
  Most of the books listed there are written by authors of the western hemisphere, though

If you want to rather delve into the literature of those countries, try Wikipedia Nepali literature, Chinese literature, and of course, there are similar pages for Pakistani literature etc.

For more book links, visit: Finding books by country: helpful links + resources

Nepal online mag

For a touch of Nepal writing, you can also visit Sahitya, the largest Nepali online literary magazine. 

Mountain ranges
For more about the Himalaya region visit the Wiki page, which also includes the map above, and here's a video with impressions.



Highest country outside Asia:
The highest country outside Asia is: Argentina, it has the "highest point in the Americas, the Western Hemisphere, and the Southern Hemisphere," and is followed by Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.

The highest point on Earth
From the highest countries, both Nepal and China share the highest point on Earth: the peek of Mount Everest with an elevation of 8.848 metre = 29029 feet.