Saturday, March 2, 2013

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
If you want to rather delve into the literature of those countries, try Wikipedia Nepali literatureChinese 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.

3 comments:

Arenel said...

I've searched some of the lists, and I have chosen Three Cups of Tea (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49436.Three_Cups_of_Tea) for the highest countries stop. The author claims to have changed the life of people in some very secluded areas of Pakistan and besides he was twice nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. Must be interesting!

Arenel said...

http://irrelevant-scribble.blogspot.cz/2013/06/three-cups-of-tea-by-greg-mortenson.html
Here is my review for the 7 highest countries! Now on to the oldest ones :)

Jules said...

Here's my review for this one. http://www.julesbookreviews.com/2013/09/book-review-fine-balance.html