Which of the following is the correct order of the physiographic regions of Uttarakhand from south to north?
- (a)Lesser Himalaya, Great Himalaya, Tarai, Shiwalik
- (b)Shiwalik, Lesser Himalaya, Great Himalaya, Tarai
- (c)Tarai, Shiwalik, Lesser Himalaya, Great Himalaya
- (d)Great Himalaya, Tarai, Lesser Himalaya, Shiwalik
Correct — C, Tarai, Shiwalik, Lesser Himalaya, Great Himalaya.
Uttarakhand is built as a stack of roughly parallel east–west belts, and the land rises overall as you move inland from the plains. Starting at the state's southern edge in Udham Singh Nagar you cross the Tarai, then the gravelly Bhabar, before the first hills appear.
Those first hills are the Shiwalik, the outermost and lowest range. Behind them, across the Dun valleys, comes the Lesser Himalaya, carrying Mussoorie, Nainital, Almora and Pauri. Beyond that rises the Great Himalaya, with Nanda Devi at 7,816 m.
So the south-to-north reading is Tarai, Shiwalik, Lesser Himalaya, Great Himalaya. Carry this away: across the four belts the option names, the order in space is also an order of increasing height — the Dun floors enclosed between the Shiwalik and the Lesser Himalaya are the exception.
- (a)Lesser Himalaya, Great Himalaya, Tarai, Shiwalik — Each pair inside this option is right; the joining of the pairs is what fails. Tarai does come before Shiwalik going north, and Lesser Himalaya does come before Great Himalaya.
But the option puts the northern pair first and the southern pair last — it is the keyed sequence with its two halves swapped. It answers the relative order within each pair taken on its own, not the four-belt sequence.
- (b)Shiwalik, Lesser Himalaya, Great Himalaya, Tarai — This is the correct south-to-north run of the three mountain belts — Shiwalik, then Lesser Himalaya, then Great Himalaya — with the Tarai lifted out of the south and parked at the northern end.
The Tarai is a plain, not a range. It lies along the Uttar Pradesh boundary, below the hills. So the option answers the order of Uttarakhand's three Himalayan ranges from south to north, once the Tarai is set aside.
- (d)Great Himalaya, Tarai, Lesser Himalaya, Shiwalik — Two things go wrong here. The direction is reversed — the stem asks south to north — and the Tarai sits in the second slot instead of at the southern end.
What the option does hold is the correct north-to-south sequence of the three ranges: Great Himalaya, Lesser Himalaya, Shiwalik. Reverse those three and put the Tarai back at the front, and option (c) is what you get.
A physiographic region is a belt of land sharing a relief, structure and drainage character. In the Himalaya these belts run roughly parallel to the mountain front, so they stack inward from the plain rather than scatter.
The three main mountain-belt contacts are major thrust faults (HFT, MBT, MCT), where older rock has been pushed southward over younger rock. That tectonic architecture is why the sequence is fixed and repeats along the chain.
Uttarakhand's settlement geography follows the belts. The grain-growing and industrial towns sit on the Tarai; hill stations and hill district headquarters such as Almora and Pauri sit in the Lesser Himalaya; the shrines and glaciers sit in the Great Himalaya.
The same lines set the hazard map. The thrusts dividing the belts are active, and the inner belts have produced damaging earthquakes — Uttarkashi in 1991 and Chamoli in 1999.
- South to north, Uttarakhand runs Tarai, Bhabar, Shiwalik, Dun valleys, Lesser Himalaya, Great Himalaya, and then the Tethys or Trans-Himalayan zone.
- The Bhabar is a porous gravel belt at the hill foot where streams sink underground; the Tarai lies south of it, marshy where that water re-emerges.
- The Main Boundary Thrust separates the Shiwalik from the Lesser Himalaya; the Main Central Thrust separates the Lesser Himalaya from the Great Himalaya.
- Dehradun is the largest of Uttarakhand's Duns — flat-floored longitudinal basins enclosed between the Shiwalik and the Lesser Himalaya.
- Mussoorie, Nainital, Almora and Pauri lie in the Lesser Himalayan belt.
- Nanda Devi, 7,816 m, rises in the Great Himalaya of Chamoli district and is the highest peak lying wholly within India.
- The Ganga leaves the hills for the plain at Haridwar, where the Shiwalik front gives way to the Bhabar and Tarai.
- Uttarakhand's Tarai belt is concentrated in Udham Singh Nagar district, on the boundary with Uttar Pradesh.
The keyed option names four of these belts — Tarai, Shiwalik, Lesser Himalaya, Great Himalaya — in this relative order. The Bhabar, the Duns and the Tethys zone lie between and beyond them.
- The direction word decides the mark. Reading the sequence backwards makes option (d) look right, because it opens with the Great Himalaya.
- The Tarai is a plain, not a range, so it can only be an end-point of the sequence. Options (a) and (d) both bury it inside.
- Bhabar and Tarai are different belts: the Bhabar is the dry, permeable gravel strip above, the Tarai the ill-drained wet strip below it.
- 'Lesser' describes height, not distance from the plain — the Lesser Himalaya lies north of the Shiwalik even though the Shiwalik is the lower range.
- Uttarakhand does not stop at the Great Himalaya: the Tethys or Trans-Himalayan zone, with the Niti and Mana valleys, lies north of the crest.
- Ordering pairs correctly is not the same as ordering the set. Option (a) gets both of its pairs right and the whole sequence wrong.
One form is exactly this one: the belts scrambled, with the direction stated in the stem, so the mark turns on reading 'south to north' before ranking anything.
The same belt stack can be tested in two further ways you should be ready for: placing a town or a peak in its belt, and naming the thrust that divides one belt from the next. Both are answered from the same stack.
UKPSC_2012_MAINS_PaperIV_Q392012Same state and same scheme — the macro physiographic regions of the Uttarakhand Himalaya. That Mains question asked for the basis of the division and the geomorphic character of each region; this one asks only that the belts be placed in order from south to north.
UPPSC_2019_PRE_GSI_Q762019Same device on different ground: named features to be arranged along a direction the stem fixes. There the features are the Suez Canal lakes and the direction is north to south; here they are Uttarakhand's physiographic belts, read south to north.
RPSC_2024_PRE_Prelims2024_Q882024Also asks for mountain ranges in a stated direction, but north to south and through coded options, so the sequence must be reconstructed from a separate list. Ours names the belts inside each option, so it can be settled by reading the option itself.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In Uttarakhand, the Dun valleys such as Dehradun lie between which two physiographic belts?
- (a)The Tarai and the Bhabar
- (b)The Shiwalik and the Lesser Himalaya
- (c)The Lesser Himalaya and the Great Himalaya
- (d)The Great Himalaya and the Tethys Himalaya
Answerb — Duns are flat-floored longitudinal valleys enclosed between the Shiwalik in the south and the Lesser Himalaya in the north; Dehradun is the largest in the state.(a) names two plain belts, whereas a Dun is defined by the ranges enclosing it on both sides. (c) is the Lesser–Great Himalaya contact, marked by the Main Central Thrust. (d) lies beyond the crest, in the Tethys zone.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Bhabar belt of Uttarakhand is best described as
- (a)a marshy, ill-drained tract where the water table stands at or near the surface
- (b)a narrow permeable strip of coarse gravel at the foot of the Shiwalik, where streams sink underground
- (c)a flat-floored valley enclosed between two Himalayan ranges
- (d)the zone of permanent snow and glaciers along the crest
Answerb — The Bhabar is the porous apron of gravel and pebbles laid down at the hill foot, where streams coming off the Shiwalik disappear into the coarse debris.(a) describes the Tarai, immediately to its south, where that water re-emerges and waterlogs the ground. (c) describes a Dun. (d) describes the high Great Himalayan zone.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Arrange the following physiographic belts of Uttarakhand in order from north to south: 1. Shiwalik 2. Great Himalaya 3. Tarai 4. Lesser Himalaya
- (a)2, 4, 1, 3
- (b)2, 1, 4, 3
- (c)3, 1, 4, 2
- (d)4, 2, 1, 3
Answera — From north to south the belts run Great Himalaya, Lesser Himalaya, Shiwalik, Tarai, which is 2, 4, 1, 3.(b) puts the Shiwalik ahead of the Lesser Himalaya, though the Shiwalik is the more southerly of the two. (c) is the correct south-to-north order, the opposite of the direction asked. (d) opens with the Lesser Himalaya, which lies south of the Great Himalaya.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which of the following lies in the Lesser Himalayan belt of Uttarakhand?
- (a)Rudrapur
- (b)Mussoorie
- (c)Nanda Devi
- (d)Mana Pass
Answerb — Mussoorie stands on a Lesser Himalayan ridge, rising immediately north of the Dehradun valley.(a) Rudrapur, headquarters of Udham Singh Nagar, sits in the Tarai. (c) Nanda Devi rises in the Great Himalaya of Chamoli district. (d) Mana Pass lies on the border with Tibet, beyond the Great Himalayan crest.