And now for something completely different, as Monty Python had it.
To those of you, dear readers, who keep sending me emails and whom I haven’t answered (yet), I offer my sincere apologies; answers will be forthcoming. So, please bear with me a tad longer; thank you very much.
In the meantime, I’m quite busy—and I would like to share some picture postcards from Nepal, of all places, during the Cold War period. Please enjoy them.
Of Mountains and People
We’ll start with this specimen from 1959, which was sent in honour of the first Austrian Dhaulagiri expedition—sent to my grandfather, Erich Sonntag, from Bombay (now: Mumbai), India, and posted on 10 July 1959.
The second image is also datable: it shows “a Bell JetRanger of Royal Nepal Airlines pictured on Tour T.7 in the Langtang area, north of Kathmandu”.
Sent in 1974, this postcard went to Tel Aviv, Israel, and it was mailed on 26 Sept. 1974, as the reverse, shown below, indicates. Curiously enough, at least to me, while I can’t read Hebrew, the text on the left-hand side of the postcard is in German.
Finally, a picture postcard that someone sent to my grand-aunt in 1984
It shows the peak of Mt. Everest, the Earth’s highest mountain. Interestingly, the reverse gives its elevation as “28,029 ft.” while Wikipedia notes that Mt. Everest at either 8,848.86 m (29,031.7 ft) or 8,848.86 m (29,031 ft 8+1⁄2 in). It would seem that Mt. Everest grew some 2 ft since the mid-1980s…
Stay tuned for more images from Nepal.
Instead of measuring peaks from afar, on the horizon, with theodolites, today's surveyors get help from satellites. They have to climb up Everest with a GPS receiver. It's not easy, but it's more accurate. In general, it is supposed that due to plate tectonics, Everest is very slowly growing.
If you are desperate for someone to translate Hebrew for you I could ask someone.