The Kali Gandaki between eight-thousanders
Nepal’s Kali Gandaki River flows between the Dhaulagiri and Annapurna massifs. At one stretch, the riverbed is about 2,520 m above sea level, while Annapurna I rises to 8,091 m. The difference exceeds 5.5 km, which is why the gorge is often described as one of the deepest in the world.
Illustration is an AI-generated conceptual landscape, not a topographic map.
That calculation compares the river’s elevation with that of a distant summit; it does not measure the vertical depth of the canyon walls at one cross-section. So the label “world’s deepest gorge” depends on how depth is defined and compared.