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Himalayas Facts

Himalayas Facts
The Himalayas are one of the highest mountain ranges in the world, located in South Asia. The Himalayas are situated on India's northern border, and spread across six countries in Asia including Nepal, China, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Pakistan, and India. Mount Everest, Kanchenjunga, and Karakoram, are part of the Himalayas and contain some of the world's highest snow-covered peaks. Although they are tallest mountains in the world, the Himalayas are the youngest at approximately 70 million years old. The Himalayas have such diverse topography that its ecological systems can include coniferous forests, grasslands, sub-tropical broadleaf forests, tropical rainforests, and glaciers.
Interesting Himalayas Facts:
The word Himalaya actually means 'abode of snow'. The upper portion of Mount Everest is covered in snow and it never melts.
The Himalayas were formed because of tectonic plate motions that pushed India and Tibet together, pushing the mountain ranges up. It is estimated that the tectonic motion continues to push the Himalayas 20mm higher each year.
The Himalayas are made up of 30 mountains. They also contain nine of the world's highest mountain peaks.
The Himalayas stretch for more than 1500 miles from Eastern India to Pakistan.
Different cultures have different names for the Himalayas. In Nepal the Himalayas are called Sagarmatha, which means Goddess of the Universe. In Tibet the Himalayas are called Chomolungma. The Hindu religion refers to the Himalayas as Giri-raj which means King of the Mountains.
Sir Andrew Waugh gave Mount Everest its name out of respect for Colonel Sir George Everest, his predecessor and former Surveyor General of India. More than 5000 people are known to have climbed Mount Everest.
The Himalayas are home to many species including wild goats, Tibetan sheep, musk deer, snow leapards, mountain goats, black bears, tigers, red pandas, and giant pandas, as well as a variety of birds including the grey bushchat, hill partridge, and Himalayan bulbul.
The Himalayas cover 0.4% of the earth's area, at 612,021 square kilometers of earth's 153,295,000 square kilometers.
The Himalayas are prone to dramatic weather changes and because of this the region experiences sudden monsoons, snowstorms, earthquakes, landslides, floods, high winds, and tremors.
Several rivers begin in the Himalayas or Tibetan Plateau including the Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong, Indus, Ganges, and the Brahmaputra rivers.
The Himalayas are home to the third largest ice deposits in the world, after the Arctic and Antarctica. Some of the Himalayas' glaciers are as long as 43 miles.
There are medicinal herbs found in the foothills of the Himalayas considered to be the purest in the world.
The Himalayas cover 75% of Nepal's area.
People do live in some regions of the Himalayas, including those that live in Hindu villages and the Tibetan Buddhists in the north. In total there are approximately 40 million people living somewhere in the Himalayans.
The yak is a common mode of transportation in the Himalayas. Yak dung is commonly used for fuel for the fire.
The Himalayas are experiencing the effects of climate change, including shifts not only of species to higher altitudes but also movements of forests, such as the pine forests slowly taking over the oak forest regions.


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