Himalaya Range

The Himalaya Range is the world's highest mountain range, with the fourteen highest mountain peaks in the world; it spans over 2,400 kilometers. It is also one of the world's longest ranges. It runs from the Pamir Mountains in the west to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh in the east, in a series of mountain ridges that help designate the border and form a buffer between India and Nepal and also between Nepal and Tibet. The entire mountain system forms the southern boundary of the Tibetan Plateau and divides North and Central Asia from the South Asian subcontinent.

Among the best-known Himalayan peaks are Everest (Qomolangma Feng), the world's highest mountain (8,848 meters), on the border between Nepal and Tibet; and K2 (Qogir Feng), the second highest (8,611meters), on the border between Tibet and Kashmir. The third-highest mountain in the world is Kangchenjunga at 8,598 meters, on the border between Nepal and India; seventh-highest is Annapurna (8,091 meters) in Nepal. Not until the 1950s were these peaks successfully scaled.

The Himalayas are actually a series of parallel ranges running roughly northwest to southeast, the most important being the Great Himalayas, the Karakoram, the Zaskar, and the Ladakh Ranges. These were thrust upward by the abutment of the Indo-Australian tectonic plate against the Eurasian plate. All of these ranges are over 3,000 meters above sea level, and the highest series, the Great Himalayas, exceed 6,100 meters, with most of the highest mountains being in Nepal and the small Indian state of Sikkim. The Middle Himalayas range between 1,800 and 2,000 meters; to the south of them the low-lying Sub-Himalayas border India and Nepal.

The climatic variation is enormous, ranging from below freezing temperatures in the north to a subtropical climate in the south. The range protects the Indian subcontinent from the cold weather of Central Asia and affects seasonal rainfall markedly.

The ancient name of the range was Himavat (Sanskrit for "abode of snow"; in Pali, Hemavata), and there are numerous descriptive references to it in the Mahabharata, an ancient Indian epic. The people who have lived in the Himalayas did not scale mountain peaks, which were considered sacred places where gods resided; but they did use the high slopes for grazing yaks, goats, and other cattle. This changed in the late twentieth century, when foreign visitors began to overrun the region, to climb the mountains or to visit Buddhist and Hindu sacred sites. Most famous are the expeditions to Everest, named for Sir George Everest, a surveyor-general of India (1830–1843). From the mid-twentieth century the Himalayas became a major tourist attraction, and nowadays as many as a million people may visit them yearly. So popular has mountain climbing become that wealthy amateurs join expeditions that attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest; even a blind man succeeded in 2001. The difficult route to the top and the harsh weather conditions sometimes result in injuries or death, even to the experienced climbers who lead these expeditions.

Paul Hockings

Ortner, Sherry B. (1999) Life and Death on Mt. Everest: Sherpas and Himalayan Mountaineering. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Shirakawa, Yoshikazu, and Kyuya Fukuda (1986). Himalayas. New York: Harry Abrams.

This complete Himalaya Range contains 524 words. This article contains 832 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).