Himalayas

The Himalayas are a mountain range in South Asia.

The west end of the mountain range is in Pakistan. They run through Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh states in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. The east end is in the south of Tibet. They are divided into 3 parts: Himadri, Himachal and Shiwaliks.

The 15 highest mountains in the world are in the Himalayas. The main ones are Mount Everest, Annapurna, and Nanga Parbat. Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth, at 8,849 meters. Of the fifteen highest mountain peaks in the World, nine are in the Nepali Himalayas.

The word "Himalaya" means House of Snow in Sanskrit, an old Indian language. The Himalayas are so high that they kept the Indian and Chinese people separate from each other most of the time. India is a peninsula that is cut off from the rest of Asia by the mountains. It is often called the Indian subcontinent because it is larger and more isolated than other peninsulas.

North of the Himalayas is the Tibetan Plateau. It is called "the roof of the world". However, the Tibetan Plateau is very dry both because of its high elevation and the mountains acting to make a gigantic rain shadow. The rain, coming from the south, falls on the south side of the mountains. This has greatly influenced the climate of the Indian subcontinent. Not only do the mountains block the extremely cold winter winds blowing from Central Asia from entering the Subcontinent, they also forces the Bay of Bengal Monsoon branch to shed its moisture along NE and Northern Indian States, Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh.