The Mekong

There are so many thoughts that run through my head on a daily basis:  I think about how I'm feeling, I think about my family, I think about work and then I think about the important things - you know, really, really important things like giant squid and octopus and whether or not the Kraken - a legendary sea monster said to dwell off the coasts of Norway and Greenland - is a giant squid or a giant octopus.  Or, I'll take some time out of my day to contemplate the length of the Mekong river and if I could run the length of the Mekong in a year as a New Year's resolution.

It's true, I actually spent a good 15 minutes of my life doing some Google-fu on the length of the Mekong and researching it's source.  Ultimately, the length of the Mekong is 2,703 miles which is far too many miles for me to run in 2014.  :(  Additionally, my OCD tendencies started to twitch uncontrollably when I couldn't find sufficient data to locate a specific source of the Mekong.  I found that "by international geographic convention, the geographic source of a river is the spring or glacial discharge within the drainage basin which is furthest from the mouth of the river."  For the Mekong, this glacial discharge area is called Lasagongma Spring in Tibet.  Here it is:

Please keep in mind there is still some debate about Lasagongma Spring as the Mekong source, but, what the hell, it's the best I could do with 15 minutes and a MacBook Pro based in Salt Lake City.  I'm not sure why I thought I would find a specific source of a huge river.  It's not like there's a giant river gnome sitting atop a hill somewhere dumping out an unending bottle of Aquafina to build the world's 12th largest river. . .