KBC 14: What acts as a barricade to the cold winds flowing down from Central Asia, thus making the Indian subcontinent relatively warmer?
Deccan Plateau
Himalayas
Aravalis
Western Ghats
Answer: Himalayas
Himalayas acts as a barricade to the cold winds flowing down from Central Asia, thus making the Indian subcontinent relatively warmer.
The Himalayas are the great mountain system of Asia forming a barrier between the Plateau of Tibet to the north and the alluvial plains of the Indian subcontinent to the south. The Himalayas include the highest mountains in the world, with more than 110 peaks rising to elevations of 24,000 feet (7,300 meters) or more above sea level. One of those peaks is Mount Everest, the world’s highest, with an elevation of 29,032 feet. The mountains’ high peaks rise into the zone of perpetual snow.
The ranges, which form the northern border of the Indian subcontinent and an almost impassable barrier between it and the lands to the north, are part of a vast mountain belt that stretches halfway around the world from North Africa to the Pacific Ocean coast of Southeast Asia. The Himalayas themselves stretch uninterruptedly for about 1,550 miles from west to east between Nanga Parbat (26,660 feet), in the Pakistani-administered portion of the Kashmir region and Namjagbarwa (Namcha Barwa) Peak (25,445 feet ) in the Tibet.
Though India, Nepal, and Bhutan have sovereignty over most of the Himalayas, Pakistan and China also occupy parts of them.
China administers some 14,000 square miles (36,000 square km) in the Ladakh region and has claimed territory at the eastern end of the Himalayas within the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. Those disputes accentuate the boundary problems faced by India and its neighbors in the Himalayan region.
Since ancient times the vast glaciated heights have attracted the attention of the pilgrim mountaineers of India, who coined the Sanskrit name Himalaya—from Hiima “snow” and alaya “abode” for that great mountain system. In contemporary times the Himalayas have offered the greatest attraction and the greatest challenge to mountaineers throughout the world.
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