In Trinidad and Tobago, people couldn’t believe that my country is landlocked. As I walked across Nepal, the Himalayan locals were astonished that I come from a country whose tallest mountain is only 1600 meters tall. It’s easy for a landlocked country to have tall mountains, right?

Well, I set out analysing Wikipedia’s list of landlocked countries, every country’s highest and lowest points, and answering these questions:

  • Which landlocked country is the flattest? (smallest difference between the highest and lowest points)
  • and Which landlocked country has the lowest highest point?

The highest lowest point of any (necessarily landlocked) country is famously held by Lesotho, also called “The Kingdom in the Sky”.

You can find the data and results here.

Vatican wins on both accounts, although being a small suburb of Rome, it’s not exactly fair game. Belarus, a proper country of nine million people, comes in second place, well ahead of all others.

Belarus