Lambton's Peak Trek - July 14, 2013

LAMBTON’S PEAK - On your way from Coimbatore to Ooty, about a kilometre from Thudiyalur, towards your left you will see a range of hills and the highest point that juts into the sky in the shape of a triangle is Lambton’s Peak, 4300-feet high, named after William Lambton, father of The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India.  Till the end of the 19^th century, this area abounded with tiger, panther and gaur.

Around 200 years before, on April 10, 1802, William Lambton began The Great Indian Arc of the Meridian, an ambitious, audacious and mathematically meticulous scientific odyssey at St. Thomas Mount in Chennai. It took 40 years to be completed. The project ended on the foothills of the Himalayas.  One of the baselines was measured in Coimbatore in 1806.

This survey established that the Himalayas is the highest mountain range and Mount Everest is the highest point on earth.

References:

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=QHtZG8beGy4C&pg=PT153&lpg=PT153&dq=lambdon+coimbatore&source=bl&ots=Gko6EIRjQ6&sig=e4_IM2oCXRFeT1jRxLTSN2VXt7E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QFXgUc-9GcTwrQeS4YGgCw&ved=0CFUQ6AEwCA

http://www.frontline.in/navigation/?type=static&page=flonnet&rdurl=fl1909/19090660.htm