Which mountain range is found between Karakoram mountain range and Pir Panjal mountain range ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

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.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) 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.  (c) 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.  (d) 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.

Concept: 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.

State PCS 2021 Q19 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2021 Q19 — Geography PYQ with Answer