Match the Regional divisions of Himalayas (List - I) with their West-East Extension (List - II).
List - I
(Regional Divisions of Himalayas)
(a) The Punjab Himalayas
(b) The Kumaon Himalayas
(c) The Ne

Question

Match the Regional divisions of Himalayas (List - I) with their West-East Extension (List - II).
List - I
(Regional Divisions of Himalayas)
(a) The Punjab Himalayas
(b) The Kumaon Himalayas
(c) The Nepal Himalayas
(d) The Assam Himalayas
List - II
(West-East Extension)
(i) Sutlej to Kali
(ii) Kali to Tista
(iii) Tista to Brahmaputra
(iv) Indus to Sutlej

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (1), '(a) - (iv), (b) - (i), (c) - (ii), (d) - (iii)'. This is Sir Sidney Burrard's fourfold longitudinal division of the Himalaya, which cuts the range not by altitude but by the great transverse river valleys, each of which breaks the mountain wall and provides a natural boundary. Read from west to east, the boundary rivers are the Indus, the Sutlej, the Kali, the Tista and the Dihang or Brahmaputra, and the four sectors between them are: the Punjab Himalaya from the Indus to the Sutlej, roughly 560 km, covering Ladakh, Kashmir and Himachal, so statement (a) takes item (iv); the Kumaon Himalaya from the Sutlej to the Kali, roughly 320 km, the shortest of the four and corresponding to present-day Uttarakhand with its Garhwal and Kumaon halves, so statement (b) takes item (i); the Nepal Himalaya from the Kali to the Tista, roughly 800 km, the longest sector and the one carrying the greatest peaks including Everest, Kanchenjunga, Makalu, Annapurna and Dhaulagiri, so statement (c) takes item (ii); and the Assam Himalaya from the Tista to the Dihang or Brahmaputra, roughly 720 km, spanning Bhutan, Sikkim's eastern edge and Arunachal Pradesh, so statement (d) takes item (iii). The single fact that unlocks the whole match is that List-I is printed in west-to-east order while List-II is deliberately not: item (iv), 'Indus to Sutlej', is printed last but belongs to the westernmost sector. Anchor on the Kali, which is the India–Nepal boundary river — the sector named after Nepal must be the one that begins at the Kali — and the rest falls out mechanically. Only option (1) carries that assignment.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Rotates the sequence by one place, so every sector is displaced eastward. It puts the Punjab Himalaya between the Kali and the Tista, which is Nepal, and the Nepal Himalaya between the Indus and the Sutlej, which is Kashmir and Himachal — geographically impossible on the Kali test alone, since the Kali is the India–Nepal boundary river and the Nepal sector must begin there. It also strands the Assam Himalaya between the Sutlej and the Kali, in Uttarakhand, some 1,500 km from Assam.  (c) Places the Punjab Himalaya between the Tista and the Brahmaputra, that is in Sikkim, Bhutan and Arunachal, and the Nepal Himalaya between the Indus and the Sutlej in the far west — a near-complete inversion of the west-east order. It happens to get the Kumaon Himalaya wrong too, assigning it the Kali–Tista stretch that belongs to Nepal. A candidate arrives here by matching on nothing more than the printed sequence of List-II, without asking where each boundary river actually flows.  (d) The straight-through mapping — (a) to (i), (b) to (ii), (c) to (iii), (d) to (iv) — which assumes List-II has been printed in the same order as List-I. It has not: List-II opens with 'Sutlej to Kali' and closes with 'Indus to Sutlej', so the westernmost extension sits in the last position. This option gives the Punjab Himalaya the Sutlej–Kali stretch, which is Uttarakhand, and hands the Assam Himalaya the Indus–Sutlej stretch in Ladakh. A one-to-one option that runs down the diagonal is worth a moment's suspicion in any matching question, and here checking a single pair against the map is enough to reject it.

Concept: The Himalaya is divided in two independent ways, and confusing them is the commonest error in this topic. The first division is transverse — parallel ranges running the length of the mountain from north to south: the Trans-Himalaya (Karakoram, Ladakh, Zaskar and Kailash ranges), the Greater Himalaya or Himadri carrying the highest peaks and the perpetual snowline, the Lesser or Middle Himalaya (Pir Panjal, Dhauladhar, Nag Tibba, Mussoorie and Mahabharat ranges) holding the hill stations and the valleys of Kashmir and Kangra, and the Outer Himalaya or Shiwaliks, the youngest and lowest belt, enclosing the flat-floored duns such as Dehra Dun. The second division, which this question uses, is longitudinal — the mountain sliced from west to east into regional sectors at the points where great rivers cut through it. Burrard's four sectors, Punjab, Kumaon, Nepal and Assam, are defined entirely by those cuts, and the boundary rivers are chosen because each is antecedent: it was flowing before the mountains rose to their present height and has kept its course by cutting down as fast as the land rose, which is why the Indus, Sutlej and Brahmaputra all rise north of the Greater Himalaya and pass straight through it in deep gorges.

State PCS 2026 Q24 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q24 — Geography PYQ with Answer