Which is the world's most beautiful mountain? The winner must be decided on the score of sheer aesthetic appeal and the ability to inspire wonder. Beauty does not depend on height, and the contender can, of course, come from any country.
The Alps, and even more so the Andes, would yield many contenders for the first round of a mountain beauty context. In the final round, however, it would be surprising if all the competing peaks did not originate in the world's youngest and highest range, our own Himalaya.
It is significant that so few of the 14 octausender big league peaks feature in the beauty stakes. Merely being 8000 metres high does not make a mountain attractive and at the outset we may dump the claims of Everest, which is positively plain from its souther approaches, though as "Mother Goddess" from the Tibetan sid, e the peak does assume a more regal air. Kanchenjunga, with its several summits clustered in one massif, is attractive but lacks the distinctiveness so necessary for the Top Ten list.
Of the 14 Himalayan giants, only K2 fulfils the dream of beauty that floats. Too isolated to possess a name, the passage to the feet of this mountain is unbelievably grand. The K stands for the Karakoram Range, which outdoes the Himalaya for its hugeness of surroundings. However, the density of the high peaks in the Karakoram tends to cancel out their individual impact.