The fact that this requires climing the height of Everest from sea level dovetails with something I've been thinking recently, which is:
How much harder would be it be to climb Everest (or Denali, or Kilimanjaro, or...) if you chose to start from the nearest point at sea level? IOW, no getting transported to Everest base camp by vehicle and getting that 5km of vertical ascent for free; walk the 400 miles from the Bay of Bengal to Everest's peak on your own two legs. I think this would be a fascinating routing problem. If anyone's done this before, I'd love to know.