Our Country, India
The physical divisions of India
Name the great physical divisions of India — the Himalayas, the Northern Plains, the desert, the Peninsular Plateau, the coastal plains and the islands — and say where each one lies and what its land is like.
India is a big country, and its land is not the same from one end of it to the other. Travel from the north to the south and you cross land that has been made in completely different ways at completely different times — mountains still rising, plains laid down grain by grain by rivers, and rock so old it was there long before either. Geographers divide the whole country into a handful of great physical divisions, and knowing them is the fastest way to make sense of the map.
The divisions, from north to south
The Himalayas run right across the north. South of them lie the Northern Plains. In the west is the Great Indian Desert, also called the Thar Desert. South of the plains rises the Peninsular Plateau, the oldest land of all. Along each coast runs a narrow strip of coastal plain, and out in the two seas lie India's islands.
The Himalayas are the highest mountains in the world, and snow lies on their peaks all through the year. They are not one range but three, running side by side: furthest north and highest is the Himadri, the Great Himalaya; below it the Himachal, the Lesser Himalaya; and lowest and outermost the Shiwaliks. The mountains do two things for the country below them — they hold back the cold winds from the north, and they feed the great rivers, which begin in their snow.
The Northern Plains were built by those rivers. For a very long time the Ganga, the Yamuna, the Brahmaputra and their tributaries have carried fine soil down out of the mountains and dropped it here, layer on layer, until the plains became flat, level and deep. That soil is the best farmland in the country, and it is why the plains are the most crowded part of India. Away to the west, where the rain hardly reaches, the same flat country turns dry and sandy: that is the Great Indian Desert, in Rajasthan.
South of the plains the land steps up onto the Peninsular Plateau — old, hard rock, worn down over an unimaginably long time and rich in minerals. Its largest part is the Deccan Plateau. Its two raised edges are the Western Ghats along the Arabian Sea and the Eastern Ghats along the Bay of Bengal, and the two ranges come together near the southern tip of the country.
Between the plateau's edges and the sea run the coastal plains. The western strip, beside the Arabian Sea, is narrow, with the Western Ghats rising close behind it; its parts have their own names, the Konkan in the north and the Malabar in the south. The eastern strip, beside the Bay of Bengal, is broader, and the great rivers of the south build their deltas across it; the Coromandel coast is part of it. Finally, India has two groups of islands: the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, and the Lakshadweep Islands in the Arabian Sea.
Worked example
Someone travelling in India writes: 'The ground here is flat for as far as I can see, the soil is deep, and there are fields and villages the whole way.' Which division are they in, and how could you tell?
Flat for as far as they can see rules out the mountains and the plateau at once.
The plateau is high but its surface is broken up by valleys and hills; only the plains are flat like this over such a distance.
Try it together
Travel south through India in four stages, and name the division you are in at each one.
Answer with the name of one division.
1.You start where the peaks carry snow all year and the land is the highest in the world. Which division is that?
Have a go
Have a go on your own. Which group of islands lies out in the Bay of Bengal?
Ready to practise?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.