The young fold-mountain system that arcs about 2,400 km along India's northern frontier from the Indus gorge to the Brahmaputra bend. This hub page links the range's role in climate, rivers, hazards, ecology and security; physiography in depth is in the linked lesson.
Deep-dive lesson:Physiographic Divisions of India in Depth. This page is a quick reference that connects the term across subjects; read the lesson for the full treatment.
Around 50 million years ago the northward-drifting Indian plate began to collide with the Eurasian plate, closing the Tethys Sea that lay between them. The sediments of that sea were folded and thrust upward, and the process is still going on, which is why the Himalaya keeps rising and the region is so earthquake-prone. Geologists treat the range as a classic example of young fold mountains, with deep gorges cut by rivers that are older than the mountains themselves.
For the exam, the important idea is that the Himalaya is not one ridge but a series of parallel ranges separated by valleys and thrust faults, becoming younger and lower from north to south. This page treats the mountains as a hub: the same physical feature explains India's climate, its great river systems, its hydropower potential, its disasters and its northern security challenges. The detailed physiography of each range is in the linked lesson, so here we focus on those connections.
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