MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 19 of 100

Correct — option (1), the Zaskar mountain range. The question is really asking whether a candidate carries the ranges of the western Himalaya in their correct north-to-south order, and that order is fixed: Karakoram at the far north, then the Ladakh range, then the Zanskar range, then the Great Himalaya or Himadri, then the Pir Panjal of the Lesser Himalaya, and finally the Shiwaliks at the outer edge above the plains. Of the two ranges lying between Karakoram and Pir Panjal, only the Zanskar is on offer here, so it is the choice the question forces. The Zanskar range runs parallel to and immediately north of the Great Himalayan range, and it is separated from the Ladakh range to its north by the trench of the Indus, which is why the Indus valley through Leh has a wall of mountains on each side. The Zanskar river drains the country between them and joins the Indus near Nimmu, downstream of Leh; when it freezes in winter its gorge becomes the ice route known as the Chadar. The Srinagar to Leh road crosses this stack of ranges in sequence and gives the ordering a physical form on the ground: Zoji La takes it over the Great Himalaya out of the Kashmir valley, and Fotu La, at over four thousand metres the highest point on the road, takes it across the Zanskar range. South of all of them, the Pir Panjal is the range that encloses the Kashmir valley on its south-western side and separates it from the Jammu plains, crossed at Banihal, beneath which the Jawahar Tunnel was opened in 1956, and much further east at Rohtang, beneath which the Atal Tunnel opened in October 2020. Fixing that sequence once, with a river or a pass attached to each interval, converts every question of this family into a matter of reading off a list rather than of recall under pressure.

• (2)Pamir mountain range — The Pamirs lie outside India altogether, mainly in Tajikistan, and they sit to the north-west of the Karakoram rather than between the Karakoram and the Pir Panjal. They are usually described as the Pamir Knot, the high tangle from which several of Asia's great ranges radiate — the Hindu Kush westward, the Tian Shan to the north-east, the Kunlun eastward and the Karakoram to the south-east. Because the Pamirs are the point from which the Karakoram itself springs, placing them between the Karakoram and a Lesser Himalayan range reverses the geography completely. The choice is offered because the name belongs to the same general high-Asian region and will feel adjacent to a candidate who has not fixed the directions.
• (3)Shivalik mountain range — The Shiwaliks are on the wrong side of the Pir Panjal. They are the outermost and lowest of the Himalayan ranges, generally between about nine hundred and eleven hundred metres, formed of unconsolidated river-borne sediments and lying immediately above the northern plains, so the order running inward from the plains is Shiwaliks, then the Lesser Himalaya including the Pir Panjal, then the Great Himalaya, then the Trans-Himalayan ranges. A range that lies south of the Pir Panjal cannot also lie between the Pir Panjal and the Karakoram far to its north. The Shiwaliks are worth knowing for the duns, the flat longitudinal valleys such as Dehra Dun and Kotli Dun that lie between them and the Lesser Himalaya.
• (4)Kirthar mountain range — The Kirthar range is not part of the Himalayan system at all. It runs roughly north to south along the border between Sindh and Balochistan in Pakistan, west of the lower Indus, and belongs to the folded ranges of the country's western margin along with the Sulaiman range further north. It is separated from the western Himalaya by the whole width of the Punjab and by the Indus plains, and its trend is meridional where the Himalayan ranges trend broadly north-west to south-east. The choice tests whether a candidate can distinguish the ranges bordering the Indus basin on the west from the ranges that stack up behind Kashmir on the north.

The Himalayan system is described in two ways at once, and both are examinable. Longitudinally, from south to north, it is divided into the Shiwaliks or Outer Himalaya, the Himachal or Lesser Himalaya which includes the Pir Panjal, the Dhauladhar, the Mussoorie and the Mahabharat ranges, the Himadri or Great Himalaya which carries the highest peaks, and beyond it the Trans-Himalayan ranges — Zanskar, Ladakh, Kailash and Karakoram — which lie in the rain shadow and belong geologically to the northern edge of the collision zone. Transversely, from west to east, it is divided into the Punjab or Kashmir Himalaya, the Kumaon Himalaya, the Nepal Himalaya and the Assam Himalaya, with the Indus, Satluj, Kali, Tista and Dihang as the dividing rivers. The Kashmir sector, which this question concerns, is where the largest number of parallel ranges is stacked, and it is also where the great antecedent rivers cut across them: the Indus, having risen near Mansarovar, flows north-westward in the trench between the Ladakh and Zanskar ranges before turning sharply through the mountains near Nanga Parbat.

Physiography of the Himalaya is a fixed part of the geography syllabus and MPSC tests it mainly through relative position: which range lies between which, which pass crosses which range, which river separates which two sections. These are questions that reward a mental cross-section rather than a list of names, because a cross-section answers all the variants at once. The commission also mixes in ranges from just outside India — the Pamirs, the Hindu Kush, the Sulaiman and Kirthar — to check whether a candidate's mental map has edges, since a name that sounds Himalayan is not necessarily part of the system. Drawing the section once, from the Punjab plains up through the Shiwaliks, the Pir Panjal, the Great Himalaya, the Zanskar, the Indus trench, the Ladakh range and the Karakoram, and marking Zoji La, Fotu La, Banihal and the Indus on it, is worth more than any amount of re-reading, and it is the single most efficient preparation for this whole group of questions.

• From north to south in the western Himalaya the ranges run Karakoram, Ladakh, Zanskar, Great Himalaya or Himadri, Pir Panjal in the Lesser Himalaya, and the Shiwaliks at the outer edge.
• The Zanskar range lies immediately north of the Great Himalaya and is separated from the Ladakh range by the trench of the Indus; the Zanskar river joins the Indus near Nimmu, downstream of Leh.
• On the Srinagar to Leh road, Zoji La crosses the Great Himalaya out of the Kashmir valley and Fotu La, at over four thousand metres the highest point of the road, crosses the Zanskar range.
• The Pir Panjal encloses the Kashmir valley on the south-west and is crossed at Banihal, under which the Jawahar Tunnel opened in 1956, and at Rohtang, under which the Atal Tunnel opened in October 2020.
• The Pamirs lie mainly in Tajikistan and are the knot from which the Hindu Kush, Tian Shan, Kunlun and Karakoram radiate; the Kirthar range runs north to south on the Sindh and Balochistan border in Pakistan and is not part of the Himalayan system.

• Placing the Shiwaliks anywhere but at the outer southern edge; they lie south of the Pir Panjal and cannot be between it and the Karakoram
• Assuming that a high range of central Asia must lie inside the Indian Himalaya, when the Pamirs are north-west of the Karakoram and outside India
• Confusing the Zanskar range with the Ladakh range; both lie between the Karakoram and the Pir Panjal, and it is the Indus trench that separates them
• Treating the Kirthar and Sulaiman ranges as Himalayan, when they trend north to south along the western margin of the Indus basin

MPSC asks Himalayan physiography as relative-position questions, as pass-to-range matches and as which-river-separates-which-section questions, and it draws the wrong choices from three pools: other Himalayan ranges, Trans-Himalayan ranges, and ranges of the north-western frontier that are not Himalayan at all. All three pools are handled by the same preparation, a labelled cross-section from the plains to the Karakoram with the passes and the Indus marked on it. Where the commission wants extra difficulty it moves from ranges to passes, since a pass belongs to exactly one range and the pairing has to be memorised, and questions on Zoji La, Banihal, Rohtang and Khardung La recur for that reason.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Zanskar range is separated from the Ladakh range to its north by the valley of which river ?

  • (a)The Indus
  • (b)The Shyok
  • (c)The Chenab
  • (d)The Jhelum

  Answer(a) The Indus — after rising near Mansarovar the river flows north-westward through the trench between the Ladakh range and the Zanskar range, which is why Leh sits in a valley walled by mountains on both sides. The Zanskar river drains the country to the south and joins the Indus near Nimmu, and the Shyok is a tributary that joins further downstream in the Karakoram sector.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Jawahar Tunnel, opened in 1956 on the Jammu to Srinagar road, passes beneath which pass and range ?

  • (a)Zoji La in the Great Himalaya
  • (b)Banihal in the Pir Panjal
  • (c)Rohtang in the Pir Panjal
  • (d)Fotu La in the Zanskar range

  Answer(b) Banihal in the Pir Panjal — the pass that carried the Jammu to Srinagar road over the range enclosing the Kashmir valley until the tunnel was driven beneath it in 1956. Rohtang is also on the Pir Panjal but far to the east, connecting Kullu with Lahaul and Spiti, and it was tunnelled much later by the Atal Tunnel opened in October 2020.