India Facts (4): Mighty Himalayas (FPFS Challenge)

The Himalayas

Source: Google Images

As the world’s highest mountains – with the highest peak in India (Khangechenzonga) reaching 8598 m – the Himalaya create an almost impregnable, indestructible, a giant boundary separating India from its neighbors to the north. This range is home to nine of the ten highest peaks on Earth, including the highest, Mount Everest. The Himalayas have profoundly shaped the cultures of South Asia. Many Himalayan peaks are sacred in both Buddhism and Hinduism. Number of religious centers of different faiths can be found under the foothills of Himalayan Region.

These mountains formed when the Indian subcontinent broke away from Gondwanaland, a super-continental in the Southern Hemisphere that included Africa, Antarctica, Australia and South America.  All by itself India drifted north and finally slammed slowly, but the immense force, into the Eurasian continent about 40 million years ago, buckling the ancient seafloor upward to form the Himalaya and many lesser ranges that stretch 2500 km from Afghanistan to Myanmar (Burma).

When the Himalaya reached its great heights during the Pleistocene  (less than 150,000 years ago), it blocked and altered weather systems creating the monsoon climate that dominates India today, as well as forming a dry rain shadow to the north.

Although it looks like a continuous range on a map, the Himalaya is actually a series of interlocking ridges, separated by countless valleys.  Until technology enabled the building or roads through the Himalaya, many of these valleys were virtually isolated, creating a divers series of mountain cultures.

Some facts about Himalayas:

•  The Himalayas have the third largest deposit of ice and snow in the world, after Antarctica and the Arctic.

•  Most of the other Himalayan rivers dissolve into the Ganges-Brahmaputra Basin. Its main rivers are the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Yamuna, as well as other tributaries. The Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers meet in Bangladesh, and drain into the Bay of Bengal through the world's largest river delta, the Sunderbans (famous for Bengal Tigers)

•  Mount Everest, located in Himalayas, is the highest mountain of the world & 5th furthest summit from the center of Earth.

Himalaya Impact: 

•  The Himalayas have a profound effect on the climate of the Indian subcontinent. It creates the Monsoon climate in India which largely affects socio economic activities. 

•  The mighty Himalayas also prevent frigid, dry winds from blowing south into the subcontinent, which keeps South Asia much warmer than corresponding temperate regions in the other continents.

Spiritual connection of Mighty Himalayas 

•  Several places in the Himalayas are of religious significance in Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism.

•  The mountains of Himalayas have always attracted people since ages to meditate to find the inner self.

•  Himalayas region is also is the origin of sacred river Ganges which is highly pious for Hindus. Around Ganges, number Hindus Pilgrimage sites are located like Haridwar, Varanasi, Allahabad etc.

Tiger Nest Temple

Source: Google Images

Amarnath Temple

Source: Google Images

Kedarnath Temple

Source: Google Images

Hemkund Sahhib Gurudwara

Source: Google Images

Please let me know if you like this post. This was 4th installment in Facts of India Series.

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I have been tagged by one of my best blogger friend, Shweta Dave to take part in Five photos Five stories Challenge (FPFS) which is- Post a picture for 5 consecutive days and attach a post to it , fiction, poem or short write-up or anything to suit your taste. I thank Shweta for this challenge. I accept it.

I am tagging one of my most respected blogger friend Sreedhar Sir on Day Four and as a part of the challenge, I will tag a new person on Day Five which will be the last installment of this challenge series.