Kanchenjunga Height: How Tall Is the World’s Third-Highest Mountain?

Kanchenjunga is 8,586 meters (28,169 feet) high. That is the elevation of its main summit above sea level, and it is the figure Nepal’s Department of Tourism publishes in Mountaineering in Nepal: Facts & Figures 2024. The Nepal Tourism Board and Britannica use the same number. It makes Kanchenjunga the third-highest mountain on Earth, after Everest and K2, and the second highest in Nepal.

Most answers stop there. This one keeps going, because the number has a past. Until 1852, surveyors believed Kanchenjunga was the tallest mountain in the world. Older books still print 28,208 feet. Its smaller summits carry different heights depending on whose list you read. And the trekkers who reach its base camps still stand more than three kilometers below the top. Below, we walk through each of those questions, and at the end we explain how we checked every figure on this page.

Kanchenjunga at a glance                        

• Height: 8,586 m (28,169 ft), about 8.6 km
• World rank: 3rd, behind Everest (8,848.86 m) and K2 (8,611 m)
• Nepal rank: 2nd, behind Everest
• Summit location: on the Nepal-India border, between Taplejung (Nepal) and Sikkim (India)
• Prominence: 3,922 m, 29th in the world
• Highest point trekkers reach: Pangpema, the North Base Camp, at about 5,143 m
• Official source: Department of Tourism, Government of Nepal (2024)

How High Is Mount Kanchenjunga?

Mount Kanchenjunga’s main summit stands 8,586 meters above sea level. In feet, that is 28,169. In kilometers, it is a little under 8.6.

“Above sea level” matters here. The figure measures the summit against mean sea level, a reference surface that runs, in theory, beneath the continents. It does not mean the mountain rises 8,586 meters from its own base, and how tall Kanchenjunga feels depends entirely on where you stand. From Pangpema, its North Base Camp, the summit is about 3,440 meters higher. From the bazaar at Taplejung, where most treks begin at about 1,820 meters, it is nearly 6,800 meters higher.

The ground around the mountain makes those numbers even more striking. The 2015 assessment of Nepal’s part of the Kangchenjunga Landscape, prepared for the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation with Tribhuvan University’s RECAST and ICIMOD, gives the area an elevation range of 60 meters to 8,586 meters. The low end is Kechana in Jhapa, the lowest point in Nepal. The authors describe the region as one of the steepest in the world within a short aerial distance of 70 kilometers, and note that some valleys in Taplejung fall to about 550 meters. Few places on Earth pack that much vertical change into one corner of a country.

Is Kanchenjunga one mountain or a group of peaks? It is one mountain with several summits, what geographers call a massif. Five summits stand out, and four of them rise above 8,450 meters. When anyone quotes the Kanchenjunga height on its own, they mean the highest of these, Kangchenjunga Main. That summit is also a giant in its own right. Its topographic prominence, the drop to the lowest point you would cross to reach any higher ground, is 3,922 meters. That low point is a col at about 4,664 meters in Tibet, and the figure ranks 29th in the world.

Kanchenjunga Height in Meters, Feet and Kilometers

The standard Kanchenjunga height converts like this:

In feet, the height of Kanchenjunga is 28,169. If you see 28,208 or 28,146 feet, you are reading an older survey value, explained in the next section.

For Hindi readers, the answer is the same: कंचनजंगा की ऊँचाई 8,586 मीटर (28,169 फीट) है।

To picture it, stack ten Burj Khalifas (828 m each) on top of one another. You would still be about 300 meters short of the summit, which sits most of the way to the altitude where passenger jets cruise.

Searchers also ask for the Kanchenjunga elevation, the Kanchenjunga altitude and the Kanchenjunga height from sea level. For a mountain, these all point to the same figure. Elevation and altitude describe a point’s vertical position, and for summits that position is always measured above sea level. So 8,586 meters answers all of them.

Is Kanchenjunga 8,586 m or 8,598 m?

Kanchenjunga is 8,586 meters. The 8,598 meter figure, usually written as 28,208 feet, comes from a Survey of India re-measurement in the 1950s. It has since been replaced, but it lingers in dictionaries, quiz books and older textbooks.

Here is the paper trail we could document:

The Himalayan Journal recorded the 1950s change in 1965. Its note on revised heights of Himalayan peaks said the Survey of India had taken fresh measurements between 1952 and 1954, moving Kangchenjunga I from 28,146 to 28,208 feet.

We could not find a published record of exactly when, or by whom, 8,598 meters gave way to 8,586 meters, so we will not invent one. What we can say with confidence is that every current official and reference source we checked uses 8,586 meters.

So has Kanchenjunga’s official height changed? On paper, yes, more than once. In recent decades, no. And if you have seen the line “the elevation of Kanchenjunga is about 8,848 metres,” that number belongs to Everest. Kanchenjunga is about 263 meters lower.

How Was Kanchenjunga’s Height Measured?

The 19th-century survey

Kanchenjunga’s height was first calculated by the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, the British-era project that mapped the subcontinent in the 1800s. Its surveyors could not enter Nepal, let alone climb into the high mountains, so they measured the peaks from survey stations far to the south. In the survey’s records, Kanchenjunga appeared as Peak IX and Everest as Peak XV.

For a while, Peak IX was the champion. Until 1852, it was assumed to be the highest mountain in the world. Calculations based on observations made in 1849 then showed that Peak XV was taller. After the figures were checked, the survey announced in 1856 that Everest was the highest, and Kanchenjunga took third place behind K2.

How triangulation works

The survey’s method was triangulation, and the idea is simpler than the name suggests.

1. Measure a baseline. Surveyors measure the distance between two points on the ground with great care.
2. Find the distance to the peak. From each end of the baseline, they measure the horizontal angle to the summit. With one known side and two known angles, trigonometry gives the distance from the observers to the mountain.
3. Find the height. They then measure the vertical angle up to the summit. Combined with the distance, it gives the summit’s height above the station, and adding the station’s own height above sea level gives the mountain’s elevation.

The hard part is the corrections. Light bends as it passes through the atmosphere, which makes distant peaks appear slightly higher than they are. The Earth curves away over long distances. The sea-level surface itself is not a perfect shape, especially under a mountain range as massive as the Himalaya. A summit capped with deep snow adds yet another unknown. Each correction can move the answer by meters, and that is why the same mountain can carry several “official” heights over a century and a half.

Can Kanchenjunga’s height be measured exactly?

Not to the centimeter, and no mountain can. Everest’s current figure of 8,848.86 meters came from a 2020 survey by Nepal and China in which teams carried satellite-positioning equipment to the summit itself. Our guide to how tall Mount Everest is explains that survey.

Kanchenjunga has not had a widely reported survey of that kind, so its official height still rests on earlier work. There is also a cultural wrinkle. A summit-based survey would mean placing instruments on the highest point, while climbers have traditionally stopped just short of it out of respect for the mountain’s sacred status. For now, 8,586 meters remains the reference.

A short history of Kanchenjunga’s height and exploration

How High Are the Five Peaks of Kanchenjunga?

The Kanchenjunga massif has five main summits, but their heights depend on whose list you read. The main summit and Yalung Kang are consistent across sources. The two summits on the southern ridge are not.

Sources: Peakbagger values as cited by Wikipedia’s Kangchenjunga article; Department of Tourism, Mountaineering in Nepal: Facts & Figures 2024; Nepal Tourism Board. Wikipedia’s own article on Kangchenjunga South also gives 8,476 m. The NTB page lists a further “Kanchenjunga West” at 8,420 m, a figure that does not match any summit in the peak databases, and we could not resolve it.

Why the disagreement? Subsidiary summits get far less attention than a main peak. Kangchenjunga South and Central were not climbed until May 1978, names shift between lists (Kangchenjunga West and Yalung Kang are the same summit), and some sources still carry older survey values. Where the figures differ, we show both rather than pick a winner.

The prominence figures in peak databases also explain why these count as summits of one mountain rather than separate peaks. Kangchenjunga Central rises only 32 meters above the saddle that links it to Kangchenjunga South. It is really a high point on a shared ridge. Only the main summit stands as a fully independent peak.

Kanchenjunga Height Compared With Everest, K2, Lhotse and Makalu

Kanchenjunga ranks third in the world, and the gaps around it are surprisingly narrow.

Makalu’s height varies slightly between published lists; the table uses the peak-database figure.

How much shorter is Kanchenjunga than Everest? About 263 meters, or 862 feet, roughly the height of an 80-story building. The two peaks stand about 125 kilometers apart on the same Himalayan arc, and on a clear day at Sandakphu on the Singalila Ridge, you can see both on one horizon, along with Makalu.

How much higher is K2 than Kanchenjunga? Only 25 meters, about 82 feet. That is the tightest gap among the world’s three highest mountains. K2 stands in the Karakoram range, far to the northwest, on the border between Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan and China.

Below Kanchenjunga, Lhotse sits 70 meters lower and Makalu, the next eight-thousander to the west, about 101 meters lower. Nepal holds eight of the world’s 14 peaks above 8,000 meters, and our guide to the 8,000-meter peaks in Nepal ranks them all. There is a neat symmetry in their history, too: Everest, K2 and Kanchenjunga were first climbed in consecutive years, 1953, 1954 and 1955.

Is Kanchenjunga the Highest Mountain in India or Nepal?

In Nepal, no. Everest, at 8,848.86 meters on the Nepal-China border, is Nepal’s highest mountain, and Kanchenjunga ranks second.

In India, the answer depends on how you define the country’s territory:

• Highest mountain in territory India administers: Kanchenjunga, at 8,586 meters. The IUCN’s World Heritage assessment of Khangchendzonga National Park describes it as India’s highest peak.
• Highest mountain India claims: K2, at 8,611 meters, in territory India claims as part of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir but does not administer.
• Highest mountain located entirely within India: Nanda Devi, at 7,816 meters, in Uttarakhand. Kanchenjunga is 770 meters higher, but it sits on the Nepal border.

Kanchenjunga is also the highest point of Sikkim, and most Indian exam papers that ask for the country’s highest peak expect it as the answer. For the border, the districts and the map, see our guide to where Kanchenjunga is located.

How High Is Kanchenjunga Base Camp?

“Base camp” means two different things on Kanchenjunga, and mixing them up causes a lot of confusion.

Trekking base camps are where trekkers go. There are two, both in Nepal. The North Base Camp at Pangpema sits at about 5,143 meters, at the end of the trail up the Kangchen Glacier. In the south, trekkers walk to the Oktang viewpoint, at about 4,730 meters, beside the Yalung Glacier. Oktang is often called the South Base Camp, but strictly it is a viewpoint; the climbing base camp lies higher up the same glacier.

The expedition base camp is where climbing teams live for weeks. On the southwest side, below the Yalung Face, it sits around 5,500 meters. One 2026 expedition reported its base camp at about 5,550 meters.

This is how those places compare with the summit:

Trekkers who reach Pangpema sometimes expect to feel close to the top. They are not. The summit still rises more than three vertical kilometers above them, which says more about Kanchenjunga’s scale than any single number.

Altitude builds slowly on the way there. Operators’ published figures differ by up to about 100 meters, so treat these as approximate:

From Taplejung to Pangpema, you gain more than 3,300 meters. Above about 2,500 meters, altitude sickness becomes a real risk, so good itineraries climb gradually and rest at Ghunsa before pushing above 4,000 meters. Our guide to altitude sickness on Nepal treks covers the warning signs. For comparison with Nepal’s busier trails, see our guides to Everest Base Camp height and Annapurna Base Camp height; Oktang sits about 600 meters above Annapurna Base Camp.

Kanchenjunga is a restricted area. Foreign trekkers need a Restricted Area Permit and a Kanchenjunga Conservation Area Permit, and a licensed guide arranged through a registered agency is mandatory. Since March 22, 2026, solo travelers can apply for the permit, but the guide rule stays. Our 2026 trekking permit price guide lists current fees. Few people make the trip: the conservation area recorded 702 visitors in 2011, according to the 2015 landscape report, and local officials counted about 1,400 foreign visitors to the region in the Nepali year 2082 (2025 to 2026).

Trek to Kanchenjunga’s base camps with us. Majestic Trails Nepal is a government-registered company in Thamel, Kathmandu, and our guides lead treks to both base camps from the Nepal side. On high routes they check every trekker’s oxygen level each evening and carry bottled oxygen, and our safety standards explain the rest. Talk to us about your Kanchenjunga trek, including a free video call before you book.

Where Can You See Kanchenjunga’s Height and Scale Best?

Distance changes everything about how a mountain looks. A nearer peak fills more of your view, even if a farther one is taller, and that is why Kanchenjunga, not Everest, dominates the northern skyline in Darjeeling and western Sikkim.

Darjeeling lies 74 kilometers south-southeast of Kanchenjunga, according to Britannica. From the town, at about 2,000 meters, the summit sits only around 5 degrees above the horizon, about half the width of a fist held at arm’s length, once you allow for the curve of the Earth. Yet the massif is so broad that it seems to fill the sky. Everest, seen from the same hills, is more than twice as far away and appears as a small point on the horizon, when it can be seen at all.

Sir Francis Younghusband captured the effect in The Epic of Mount Everest in 1926. He described looking from Darjeeling, about 7,000 feet up, down to the Rangeet River at about 1,000 feet, then up through ridge after ridge of forest to the summit about 40 miles away. In metric terms, that is a sweep from about 300 meters to 8,586 meters, more than 8 kilometers of vertical relief, across roughly 64 kilometers.

The best places to take in the mountain’s full height:

• Tiger Hill, Darjeeling (West Bengal, India): the classic sunrise viewpoint, where the massif turns pink at first light.
• Pelling (Sikkim, India): a hill town in western Sikkim facing the southern side of the massif.
• Sandakphu (West Bengal, India): at about 3,636 meters on the Singalila Ridge, one of the few places where Everest, Makalu and Kanchenjunga share one horizon.
• Pathibhara Devi Temple (Taplejung, Nepal): a hilltop shrine at about 3,794 meters that looks straight across at the massif.
• Pangpema and Oktang (Taplejung, Nepal): the trekking base camps, where the north and south faces rise directly above you.

Why Does Kanchenjunga’s Height Matter?

It shaped the mountain’s sacred status

To the people who live beneath it, Kanchenjunga is not just tall. It is sacred. The 2015 landscape report records that the mountain is culturally regarded as the Five Treasures of Snow, repositories of gold, silver, gems, grain and holy books. In the Limbu language, it is Sewalungma, “the mountain that we offer greetings to.” In Sikkim, it is honored as a guardian deity.

That reverence changed mountaineering history. Before the 1955 expedition, its members promised Tashi Namgyal, the Chogyal of Sikkim, that the summit would remain untouched. On May 25, 1955, Joe Brown and George Band stopped just below the highest point, and climbers have largely kept to that tradition since.

It decides where ice can survive

Height also governs ice. According to the 2015 report, the average snowline in eastern Nepal lies around 5,000 meters, and 732 square kilometers of the Tamur River basin sit above it. About 479 square kilometers of Nepal’s part of the Kangchenjunga Landscape are covered by permanent snow, ice and glaciers. The Tamur itself rises from the Kangchenjunga glacier and drains almost a third of that area, while the Yalung Glacier alone covers about 82 square kilometers. Communities in Taplejung and Panchthar told the report’s researchers that snowfall and snow cover have declined in recent years. A fuller look at the region’s glaciers and wildlife belongs in its own guide.

It sets the limit for climbers

For climbers, the height places the summit well inside the death zone, the band above about 8,000 meters where the air holds too little oxygen for the body to adapt. At 8,586 meters, air pressure is roughly a third of that at sea level. By May 2022, the Himalayan Database had recorded 532 summits of Kanchenjunga and 52 deaths on the main mountain, roughly one death for every ten successful ascents. Everest, by comparison, had about 12,900 summits and around 340 deaths by the end of 2024. The figures cover different periods and compare deaths with summits rather than all attempts, so they show a pattern, not a precise risk. The pattern is still clear.

How We Verified Kanchenjunga’s Height: Methodology and Findings

Our methodology

We did not measure the mountain ourselves. What we did was compare every figure on this page across independent types of source, and decide in advance how to handle disagreements.

1. Nepal government sources: the Department of Tourism’s Mountaineering in Nepal: Facts & Figures 2024 and the Nepal Tourism Board.
2. Research publications: Kangchenjunga Landscape Nepal: from conservation and development perspectives (Chaudhary and others, 2015, published by MoFSC, RECAST and ICIMOD) and the IUCN World Heritage Outlook.
3. Reference works: Britannica, and Wikipedia’s articles with the Peakbagger data they cite.
4. Historical records: the Himalayan Journal’s 1965 note on revised peak heights and Younghusband’s 1926 account.
5. Mountaineering records: Himalayan Database totals as reported by Wikipedia, and dated 2026 expedition reports.
6. Trekking itineraries: two published operator itineraries for the Kanchenjunga circuit.

Our rules were simple. When official and reference sources agreed, we used that figure. When they disagreed, we showed both and said so. Trekking altitudes, which vary between operators, are rounded and labeled approximate. Time-sensitive claims carry a date.

Key statistics

What we found

1. The main summit is settled. Every current official and reference source we checked gives 8,586 meters (28,169 feet).
2. The 8,598 meter figure has a clear origin. It is the Survey of India’s 1952 to 1954 re-measurement of 28,208 feet, reported in 1965. Dictionaries still carry it, along with the earlier 28,146 feet.
3. The smaller summits are where sources split. Kangchenjunga South is 8,494 meters in peak databases but 8,476 meters on the Nepal Tourism Board’s list and in Wikipedia’s own article on the peak. Yalung Kang, at 8,505 meters, is the one subsidiary summit every source agrees on.
4. Even counts of high peaks depend on the boundary. The 2015 report lists 10 peaks above 7,000 meters in Taplejung district, while the wider Kangchenjunga Himal, which crosses into Sikkim, holds 16.
5. Trekking altitudes vary by up to about 100 meters. Pangpema appears as 5,140 to 5,144 meters, Lhonak as 4,750 to 4,780 meters, and one itinerary lists Ghunsa at both 3,430 and 3,595 meters. Figures for the Mirgin La pass range from 4,480 to 4,700 meters, too wide to publish one number.
6. Method shapes the numbers, everywhere. ICIMOD’s 2001 and 2011 inventories counted 356 and 209 glacial lakes in the Tamur basin. The report attributes the gap to different data sources and methods, the same reason a mountain’s official height can move.

Frequently Asked Questions About Kanchenjunga’s Height

What is the height of Mount Kanchenjunga?

Mount Kanchenjunga is 8,586 meters (28,169 feet) above sea level, according to Nepal’s Department of Tourism, the Nepal Tourism Board and Britannica. It is the third-highest mountain in the world after Everest and K2, the second highest in Nepal, and the highest point in Sikkim.

How tall is Kanchenjunga in km and feet?

Kanchenjunga is about 8.6 kilometers (8.586 km) tall, or 28,169 feet. Older references sometimes give 28,208 or 28,146 feet. Those come from earlier Survey of India measurements and have been superseded.

How much shorter is Kanchenjunga than Everest?

Kanchenjunga is about 263 meters (862 feet) shorter than Everest. Everest stands at 8,848.86 meters, measured in a joint 2020 survey by Nepal and China, while Kanchenjunga stands at 8,586 meters. The two peaks are about 125 kilometers apart.

How much higher is K2 than Kanchenjunga?

K2 is 25 meters (82 feet) higher than Kanchenjunga. K2 measures 8,611 meters and ranks second in the world, while Kanchenjunga, at 8,586 meters, ranks third. K2 stands in the Karakoram, far to the northwest of Kanchenjunga.

Is Kanchenjunga one mountain or a group of peaks?

Kanchenjunga is one mountain, or massif, with five main summits. Four of them rise above 8,450 meters. The quoted height of 8,586 meters belongs to the highest, Kangchenjunga Main, which is the only one that stands as a fully independent peak.

Has Kanchenjunga’s official height changed?

Yes, on paper. The Survey of India’s official figure moved from 28,146 feet to 28,208 feet (about 8,598 m) after a 1952 to 1954 re-measurement. Today’s standard is 8,586 meters (28,169 feet), used by Nepal’s Department of Tourism and other official sources.

Can Kanchenjunga’s height be measured exactly?

No mountain can be measured to the centimeter. Results depend on corrections for atmospheric refraction, the Earth’s curvature, the sea-level reference and summit snow. Kanchenjunga has not had a widely reported summit-based survey like Everest’s in 2020, so 8,586 meters remains the reference.

Why is Kanchenjunga considered sacred?

Local communities regard Kanchenjunga as the Five Treasures of Snow, repositories of gold, silver, gems, grain and holy books. The Limbu call it Sewalungma, “the mountain that we offer greetings to,” and Sikkim honors it as a guardian deity. Climbers traditionally stop just short of the summit out of respect.

How high is Kanchenjunga Base Camp?

The North Base Camp at Pangpema sits at about 5,143 meters, and the Oktang viewpoint near the south side sits at about 4,730 meters. Both are trekking destinations. Climbing expeditions use a separate base camp on the southwest side, at around 5,500 meters.

Is Kanchenjunga still growing?

The Himalaya is still being pushed upward as India moves north into Asia, at about 5 centimeters a year according to the American Museum of Natural History. Erosion works against that uplift, and no recent survey has changed Kanchenjunga’s official height of 8,586 meters.