5. Formation of the Himalayas The Himalayas are among the youngest mountain ranges on the planet. According to the modern theory of plate tectonics, their formation is a result of a continental collision along the convergent boundary between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Eurasian Plate.
6. Eurasian collision The Indo-Australian plate is still moving at 67mm/year, and over the next 10 million years it will travel about 1500 km into Asia.
18. Four peaks of the Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everest as seen from the International Space Station looking south-south-east over the Tibetan Plateau.
19. The Himalaya, due to its large size and expanse, has been a natural barrier to the movement of people for a long time. In particular, this has prevented intermingling of people from the Indian subcontinent with people from China and Mongolia, causing significantly different languages and customs between these regions.
20. Nepali culture is very similar to the cultures of Tibet, and India, which borders to the south. There are similarities in clothing, language and food.
21. Nepal Located between the giants China to the north and India to the south this country is home to more than 20 million people of around 50 ethnic groups.
22. A constitutional monarchy is a form of monarchical government established under a constitutional system which acknowledges an elected or hereditary monarch as head of state.
28. Taktsang Monastery The Buddhist Taktsang Monastery, "Tiger's Nest," perches on a cliff above Paro Valley in Bhutan, a tiny kingdom between China and India on the Great Himalaya Range.
29. The Ganges river has a long history of reverence in India and is often called the 'holy Ganga'. It traces its origin to a glacier in the Himalayas and joins the Alaknanda River to form the Ganga. Alluvial plain
30. The Ganges flows across the large plains of North India and empties into the Bay of Bengal after dividing up into many distributaries.
31. Varanasi is closely associated with the Ganges and has many temples along its banks
32.
33. Sacred waters Hindus have long believed that the water of Ganga has a special purity. Studies conducted in 1983 on water samples taken from the right bank of the Ganga at Patna confirm that escheria coliform (E.Coli.), fecal streptococci and vibrio cholerae organisms die two to three times faster in Ganga than in water taken from the rivers Son and Gandak and from dug wells and tube wells in the same area.
34. Pollution The Ganges collects large amounts of human pollutants as it flows through highly populous areas. These populous areas, and other people down stream, are then exposed to these potentially hazardous accumulations.
35. Delta Formed as the Ganges River empties into the Bay of Bengal after dividing up into many distributaries
36. Bangladesh Surrounded by India, this country on the northern coast of the Bay of Bengal shares a small common border with Myanmar.
37. The borders of Bangladesh were set by the partition of India in 1947, when it became the eastern wing of Pakistan , separated from the western wing by 1,000 miles.
38. Bangladesh The country is low-lying riverine land traversed by the many branches and tributaries of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers.
39. Rabindranath Tagore The Bengali poet, dramatist, and writer from Santiniketan, became in 1913 the first Asian Nobel laureate. He won his Nobel Prize in Literature for notable impact his prose works and poetic thought had on English, French, and other national literatures of Europe and the Americas.
47. Indus Water Treaty This water-sharing treaty between India and Pakistan was signed in 1960 by the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the then President of Pakistan Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan .
49. Pakistan P akistan extends along either side of the historic Indus River, following its course from the mountain valleys of the Himalayas down to the Arabian Sea.
51. Demographics Pakistan's population of 128 million is one of the fastest-growing in Asia. The two largest ethnic groups are the Punjabis, an Indo-Aryan people who dominate political and business life, and the Pashtuns, who work mainly as herders and farmers.
52. Pakistan The sixth most populous country in the world and the second most populous country with a Muslim majority. The city of Islamabad, with its mix of traditional Islamic architecture styles and modern features, became the capital city when it was officially moved here from Karachi in 1959.
53. King Faisal Mosque in Islamabad, one of the largest in the world. Pakistani society is largely multilingual and predominantly Muslim, with high regard for traditional family values
54. Indus River P akistan extends along either side of the historic Indus River, following its course from the mountain valleys of the Himalayas down to the Arabian Sea.
57. Sri Lanka A teardrop-shaped tropical island nation off the southeast coast of the Indian subcontinent , i t was a British Empire crown colony for more than a century, gaining independence in 1948. Sri Lankan Army
58. Tamil Tigers The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers , is a militant organization that has been waging a secessionist campaign against the Sri Lankan government since the 1970s in order to secure a separate state for the Tamil majority regions in the north of Sri Lanka.
59. The LTTE is proscribed as a terrorist organization by 32 countries.
60. Sri Lanka Long known as Ceylon , and as a popular port-of-call, it declared independence in 1948, subsequently changing its name to Sri Lanka in 1972.
61. Sri Lankan authorities report 30,196 confirmed deaths after the island was hit by the tsunami resulting from the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake on December 26, 2004.
62. The Republic of Maldives This archipelago island nation consists of a group of atolls in the Indian Ocean about 700 kilometers south-west of Sri Lanka.
63. atoll Coral reefs, originally fringing the edges of the island, become a barrier reef outlining the contour of the original coastline. After the original island slips entirely beneath the waves, all that is left is a coral atoll . A volcanic island forms in deep tropical waters, giving coral polyps a foundation to grow on. In time, the volcano becomes dormant and the island begins to subside.
64. Tourism The development of tourism has fostered the overall growth of the country's economy. Today, tourism is the country's biggest foreign exchange earner, contributing to 20 percent of the GDP.
65. Tsunami The tsunami that struck Malé in the Maldives on December 26, 2004.
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