Himalayas

The Himalayas stretch across land controlled by India, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, and China.

The Himalayas stretch uninterruptedly for about 1,550 miles (2,500 km) in 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, and are known for their soaring heights, steep-sided jagged peaks, valleys, and alpine glaciers, deep river gorges, and a series of elevational belts that display different ecological associations of flora, fauna, and climate. The mountains’ high peaks rise into the zone of perpetual snow.

The first known Himalayan sketch map of some accuracy was drawn up in 1590 by Antonio Monserrate, a Spanish missionary to the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar.

The Himalayas are drained by 19 major rivers, of which the Indus and the Brahmaputra are the largest, each having catchment basins in the mountains of about 100,000 square miles (260,000 square km) in extent.

Mount Everest was first successfully scaled in May 1953 by the New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and his Tibetan partner Tenzing Norgay.