Himalayas

The Himalayas are a very long line of very tall mountains.

They are in Asia. Their name means home of snow. The tallest mountain in the whole world, Mount Everest, is here. Many other giant mountains stand next to it.

The Himalayas are the highest mountains on Earth. They stand like a giant wall between the Plateau of Tibet to the north and the flat plains of India to the south. Britannica counts more than 110 peaks that rise 7,300 meters or more, including Mount Everest, the highest of all at 8,849 meters.

The range curves for about 2,500 kilometers from Nanga Parbat in the west to Namcha Barwa in the east, and it is 200 to 400 kilometers wide. The countries of Nepal and Bhutan lie within the mountains, and much of the range is in India, with parts in Pakistan and China. The name Himalaya comes from two old Sanskrit words: hima, meaning snow, and alaya, meaning home.

Britannica describes the Himalayas as a great mountain system forming a barrier between the Plateau of Tibet and the alluvial plains of the Indian subcontinent, part of a mountain belt that stretches halfway around the world from North Africa to the Pacific coast of Southeast Asia. They run without a break for about 2,500 km between Nanga Parbat (8,126 m) and Namcha Barwa (7,756 m), are 200 to 400 km wide, and cover about 595,000 km². The USGS gives a longer figure, about 2,900 km, so lengths depend on where the ends are drawn.

More than 110 peaks reach 7,300 m or higher. The Great Himalaya Range, the backbone of the system, reaches its maximum height in Nepal and holds, in Britannica's words, 10 of the 13 highest peaks in the world, each above 8,000 m, from Nanga Parbat to Kanchenjunga. India, Nepal and Bhutan hold most of the range, and Pakistan and China administer parts of it. Britannica notes that the pilgrim mountaineers of India coined the Sanskrit name, from hima, snow, and alaya, abode.

Wet winds blow up against the Himalayas.

Rain and snow fall on the south side. The north side stays very dry. Snow and ice up high melt into big rivers. Many people drink and farm with that water.

The Himalayas are so high that they change the weather of a whole region. In summer, the monsoon winds carry moist air toward the mountains. The air drops most of its rain and snow on the southern slopes, so Darjeeling, in India, gets about 3,050 millimeters of rain a year. Behind the mountains, places like Leh get only 75 to 150 millimeters.

The Himalayas are drained by 19 major rivers, including the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. Glaciers help feed them; the Gangotri Glacier, one of the sources of the Ganges, is 32 kilometers long. Britannica notes that most Himalayan glaciers are now shrinking, at least partly because of climate change.

Britannica calls the Himalayas a great climatic divide. The Great Himalaya Range blocks cold continental air from reaching India in winter and forces the southwesterly monsoon to drop most of its moisture before crossing, so annual precipitation on the southern slopes runs from about 1,530 mm at Shimla to 3,050 mm at Darjeeling, while Skardu, Gilgit and Leh, north of the range, get only 75 to 150 mm. The major rivers, including the Indus, Brahmaputra, Sutlej and two Ganges headwaters, are probably older than the mountains they cross and cut gorges 1,500 to 5,000 m deep as the land rose.

In 2023 the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) reported on the wider Hindu Kush Himalaya region. Its glaciers disappeared 65 percent faster in 2011 to 2020 than in the previous decade and could lose up to 80 percent of their volume by 2100 on current emissions. Snow and ice there feed 12 rivers flowing through 16 countries, supporting 240 million people in the mountains and a further 1.65 billion downstream.

Different animals live at different heights.

Rhinos and elephants live in the warm, low forests. Red pandas and bears live in cooler forests higher up. Snow leopards live high in the rocky mountains. Tiny spiders live even higher!

Climbing the Himalayas takes you through tropical, temperate and alpine zones. Warm rainforests grow in the eastern foothills, then come pine and oak forests, and above the tree line, at about 3,200 to 3,600 meters, lie alpine meadows with juniper and rhododendron.

At the foot of the mountains in southern Nepal, Indian rhinoceroses and elephants live in the forested Tarai. Asiatic black bears, clouded leopards and langur monkeys live in the forests, and snow leopards, red pandas and yaks live in remote places higher up. In Nepal alone, almost 800 kinds of birds have been seen. UNESCO protects India's Valley of Flowers National Park, famous for its meadows of alpine flowers.

Britannica groups Himalayan vegetation into tropical, subtropical, temperate and alpine types, set mainly by elevation and rainfall. Tropical evergreen rainforest is confined to the humid eastern and central foothills, where some 4,000 flowering plant species are estimated to grow; temperate mixed forests extend from about 1,400 to 3,400 m; and the alpine zone begins at the tree line, 3,200 to 3,600 m, reaching up to 4,200 m in the west and 4,500 m in the east, with juniper and rhododendron.

Eastern fauna resembles that of southern China and Southeast Asia; western fauna has affinities with Mediterranean and Central Asian regions. Elephants and rhinoceroses are restricted to parts of the Tarai in southern Nepal; the Indian rhinoceros and musk deer are endangered and survive mainly in reserves; the Kashmir stag, or hangul, is near extinction. Snow leopards, brown bears, red pandas and Tibetan yaks have limited populations in remote high areas, and insects, spiders and mites live as high as 6,300 m. UNESCO's Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers listing records snow leopard, Himalayan musk deer and a large population of blue sheep, or bharal.

Many different people live in the Himalayas.

Some herd sheep and goats up and down the mountains. Some farm on steps cut into the hills. They speak many languages.

Many peoples live in the Himalayas, and they speak languages from two big language families. Some are herders. Britannica describes the Gaddi, who keep flocks of sheep and goats and move them down from the high pastures only in winter, returning in June. The Gurung of Nepal graze cattle on the slopes of the Annapurna mountains as high as 3,700 meters. The Ladakhi farm on terraces beside the Indus River.

The Sherpa, who live south of Mount Everest, are famous mountaineers. Nepal's Kathmandu Valley, now home to a large city, was once filled by a lake that dried up about 200,000 years ago.

Two of the subcontinent's four main language families, Indo-European and Tibeto-Burman, are well represented in the Himalayas, reflecting long histories of movement from Central Asia and Iran, from India and from East Asia. Broadly, Britannica says, the Great and Tethys Himalayas are home to Tibetan and other Tibeto-Burman speakers, while the Lesser Himalayas are home to Indo-European speakers such as the Kashmiri, Gaddi and Gujari.

Ways of life follow the land. The Gaddi move their flocks to the highest pastures in June and down only in winter; the Gujari seek pasture at different elevations; the Champa herd in the upper Indus valley; the Ladakhi farm terraces and alluvial fans along the Indus. In Nepal, the Gurung pasture cattle up to 3,700 m on the Annapurna massif, and the Sherpa, south of Everest, are famed mountaineers; Britannica notes more Sherpa now live around Darjeeling than in the Everest homeland. In Arunachal Pradesh, each group has its home in a distinct river valley and practices shifting cultivation.