International Mountain Day – 11th December
Who doesn’t love mountains – we all do, isn’t it – and if you don’t, I’m sure the moment you get a chance to visit them, travel through them, hike them – you would fall for them forever.
This international mountain day – here’s my view and some options or thoughts which I would like to share as a solo traveller.
Mountains are early gauges of climate change and as we witness a global climate change that continues to get warm, the mountain people and some of the world’s hungriest and poorest they face even more struggles to survive. The rising temperatures, of course, mean that mountain glaciers are melting at unmatched rates, heartrending freshwater supplies which are downstream for millions of people who live in mountains and otherwise.
Do you know that almost one billion people live in mountain areas, and over half the human population is dependent on mountains for food, water, and clean energy? Yet we humans are playing around them and our mountains are under threat from land degradation, climate change, natural disasters, and overexploitation, in fact, there some far-reaching and devastating consequences. On the other hand, the Mountain communities have an affluence of knowledge and approaches that are accumulated over generations, on how to acclimatise to this climate variability – yet the life is now tough.
Not going on the deeper threatening mode I would like to highlight India’s oldest and the youngest mountains.
To your surprise, India is the country who has the oldest and the youngest mountains in the entire world. Woah! On this international mountain day – have a look at some of the facts about the Himalayas….
The Himalayas is still growing at a speed of 20 millimetres per year. Due to which landslides and tremors are frequent in the region.
The Aravalli Ranges in India is considered to be the oldest in the old step category on mountains. These types of mountains are formed from continuous and longing natural erosion of steep mountains. Earlier the height of Aravalli was at par with the Himalayas.
The Aravalli ranges are the oldest mining fields as well in the world and the archaeologists have actually found traces of copper mining dating back to the 5th century BC.
The Himalayan mountain range has nine highest peaks in the world and the highest being is Mount Everest – 8848 meters.
The highest peak of Aravalli is Guru Shikhar which is 5650 feet at Mount Abu in Rajasthan. The peak is named after Lord Dattatreya, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu.
If you go north India – beyond this there lays the most hostile natural environment on earth – that is the Siberian winds. In fact, it is only because of the Himalayan range that the country does not face severe cold breeze and windy air from the north.
You should know that Himalayan mountains are the ones who are responsible to create one of the hardest deserts on earth to its north – that is Taklamakan Desert – China also called as Sea of Death.
The Himalayan holds the third largest ice mass in the world after the artic and Antarctica. The range of the Himalayan Mountains consists of over 15000 glaciers that store almost 12000 cubic kilometres of fresh water.
These are the facts about the Himalayas which show how rich they are and what all India is known for in the entire world. Other than this the exotic wildlife, flora and fauna are unbeatable. But all these are in danger too, thus, maybe we travellers can take a pledge to keep our Himalayas clean, safe and preserved by doing our bit in our own way so that our generations can witness the grandness of the Himalayas and our mountains.
Keep Travelling 🙂
Be Happy 🙂