2. Himalayas
• The Himalayas, or Himalaya is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of
the Indian subcontinent from theTibetan Plateau.
• The range has many of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount
Everest.The Himalayas include over fifty mountains exceeding 7,200 m in
elevation, including ten of the fourteen 8,000-metre peaks.
• By contrast, the highest peak outsideAsia (Aconcagua, in the Andes) is 6,961 m
tall.
• Himalayan mountain range runs west-northwest to east-southeast in an arc 2,400
km long.
3.
4. History
• The Himalayan range is one of the youngest
mountain ranges on the planet and was formed 40-
50 million years ago.
• According to the modern theory of plate tectonics,
its formation is a result of a continental collision
between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Eurasian
Plate.
• The Indian plate is still moving at 67 mm per year,
and over the next 10 million years it will travel about
1,500 km into Asia.
5. Himalayan Resources
• Himalayan mountains contain important natural resources of frozen fresh water in
the form of snow and glaciers.
• The great northern plains of India sustain on the perennial melt of snow and
glaciers meeting the water requirements of agriculture, industries, domestic sector
even in the months of summer when large tracts of the country go dry.
• As per the inventory developed under the study there are 32,392 glaciers in the
Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra basins draining into India. India alone, has 16,627
glaciers which covers an area of 40,563 sq. km.
8. Indus River Basin
• The Indus river basin stretches from the Himalayan mountains in the north
to the dry alluvial plains of Sindh province in Pakistan in the south and finally
flows out into the Arabian Sea.
