Question

give 6 characteristics of Himalayan and Peninsular

Answer 1

Himalayan is the highest mountain Himalayan is very cold place

Answer 2

Physical Features
The most characteristic features of the Himalayas are their soaring heights, steep-sided jagged peaks, valley and alpine glaciers often of stupendous size, topography deeply cut by erosion, seemingly unfathomable river gorges, complex geologic structure, and series of elevational belts (or zones) that display different ecological associations of flora, fauna, and climate. Viewed from the south, the Himalayas appear as a gigantic crescent with the main axis rising above the snow line, where snowfields, alpine glaciers, and avalanches all feed lower-valley glaciers that in turn constitute the sources of most of the Himalayan rivers. The greater part of the Himalayas, however, lies below the snow line. The mountain-building process that created the range is still active. As the bedrock is lifted, considerable stream erosion and gigantic landslides occur.
The Himalayan ranges can be grouped into four parallel longitudinal mountain belts of varying width, each having distinct physiographic features and its own geologic history. They are designated, from south to north, as the Outer, or Sub-, Himalayas (also called the Siwalik Range); the Lesser, or Lower, Himalayas; the Great Himalaya Range (Great Himalayas); and the Tethys, or Tibetan, Himalayas. Farther north lie the Trans-Himalayas in Tibet proper. From west to east the Himalayas are divided broadly into three mountainous regions: western, central, and eastern.
Geologic history
Over the past 65 million years, powerful global plate-tectonic forces have moved the Earth’s crust to form the band of Eurasian mountain ranges—including the Himalayas—that stretch from the Alps to the mountains of Southeast Asia.Simplified north–south cross section of the Himalayas, revealing a foreland basin (Ganga Basin), an overthrusting of crystalline terrains onto the Indian Plate, and a steeper thrust fault (a ramp) beneath the Great Himalayas.Simplified north–south cross section of the Himalayas, revealing a foreland basin (Ganga Basin),.During the next 30 million years, shallow parts of the Tethys Ocean gradually drained as its sea bottom was pushed up by the plunging Indian-Australian Plate; that action formed the Plateau of Tibet. On the plateau’s southern edge, marginal mountains—the Trans-Himalayan ranges of today—became the region’s first major watershed and rose high enough to become a climatic barrier. As heavier rains fell on the steepening southern slopes, the major southern rivers eroded northward toward the headwaters with increasing force along old transverse faults and captured the streams flowing onto the plateau, thus laying the foundation for the drainage patterns for a large portion of Asia. To the south the northern reaches of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal rapidly filled with debris carried down by the ancestral Indus, Ganges (Ganga), and Brahmaputra rivers. The extensive erosion and deposition continue even now as those rivers carry immense quantities of material every day.



Finally, some 20 million years ago, during the early Miocene Epoch, the tempo of the crunching union between the two plates increased sharply, and Himalayan mountain building began in earnest. As the Indian subcontinental plate continued to plunge beneath the former Tethys trench, the topmost layers of old Gondwana metamorphic rocks peeled back over themselves for a long horizontal distance to the south, forming nappes. Wave after wave of nappes thrust southward over the Indian landmass for as far as 60 miles (about 100 km). Each new nappe consisted of Gondwana rocks older than the last. In time those nappes became folded, contracting the former trench by some 250 to 500 horizontal miles (400 to 800 km). All the while, downcutting rivers matched the rate of uplift, carrying vast amounts of eroded material from the rising Himalayas to the plains where it was dumped by the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra rivers. The weight of that sediment created depressions, which in turn could hold more sediment. In some places the alluvium beneath the Indo-Gangetic Plain now exceeds 25,000 feet (7,600 metres) in depth.
Once the Great Himalayas had risen high enough, they became a climatic barrier: the marginal mountains to the north were deprived of rain and became as parched as the Plateau of Tibet. In contrast, on the wet southern flanks the rivers surged with such erosive energy that they forced the crest line to migrate slowly northward.