Ghats refer to two converging mountain ranges in south-eastern India, called the Eastern Ghats [1] and Western Ghats, [2] running along the eastern and western seaboards of the country.
India, also known as the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by area and with more than 1.3 billion people, it is the second most populous country as well as the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.
The Eastern Ghats are a discontinuous range of mountains along India's eastern coast. The Eastern Ghats run from the northern Odisha through Andhra Pradesh to Tamil Nadu in the south passing some parts of Karnataka and in the Wayanad district of Kerala. They are eroded and cut through by four major rivers of peninsular India, viz. Godavari, Mahanadi, Krishna, and Kaveri.
Western Ghats also known as Sahyadri is a mountain range that covers an area of 140,000 km² in a stretch of 1,600 km parallel to the western coast of the Indian peninsula, traverse the States of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the eight "hottest hot-spots" of biological diversity in the world. It is sometimes called the Great Escarpment of India. It is a biodiversity hotspot that contains a large proportion of the country's flora and fauna; many of which are only found in India and nowhere else in the world. According to UNESCO, Western Ghats are older than Himalayan mountains. It also influences Indian monsoon weather patterns by intercepting the rain-laden monsoon winds that sweep in from the south-west during late summer. The range runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau, and separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain, called Konkan, along the Arabian Sea. A total of thirty-nine areas including national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and reserve forests were designated as world heritage sites - twenty in Kerala, ten in Karnataka, five in Tamil Nadu and four in Maharashtra.
The Eastern Ghats parallel the Coromandel Coast. The average elevation of the range is 600 metres (2,000 feet) above sea level. The Eastern Ghats lie at a distance of 80 to 240 km (50 to 149 mi) from the coast, but at Vishākhapatnam they form precipitous escarpments along the Bay of Bengal. The chief rivers that cut through the mountains are the Godāvari, Krishna, and the Kaveri.
The Coromandel Coast is the southeastern coast region of the Indian subcontinent, bounded by the Utkal Plains to the north, the Bay of Bengal to the east, the Kaveri delta to the south, and the Eastern Ghats to the west, extending over an area of about 22,800 square kilometres. Its definition can also include the northwestern coast of the island of Sri Lanka. The coast has an average elevation of 80 metres and is backed by the Eastern Ghats, a chain of low, flat-topped hills.
The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean, bounded on the west and northwest by India on the north by Bangladesh, and on the east by Myanmar and the Andaman Islands of India and Myanmar and the Nicobar Islands of India. Its southern limit is a line between Sri Lanka and the northwesternmost point of Sumatra (Indonesia). It is the largest water region called a bay in the world. There are Countries dependent on the Bay of Bengal in South Asia and Southeast Asia. The Bay of Bengal was also called the Chola Lake.
The Krishna River is the fourth-biggest river in terms of water inflows and river basin area in India, after the Ganga, Godavari and Brahmaputra. The river is almost 1,400 kilometres (870 mi) long. The river is also called Krishnaveni. It is one of the major sources of irrigation for Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
The Western Ghats extend from the southern portion of the valley of the River Tāpi along the Malabar Coast to Cape Comorin. The range is divided by Pālghāt Gap (40 km/25 mi wide); the section north of the division is 1,300 km (810 mi) long and that to the south of the gap is 320 km (200 mi). In many sections, the range is separated only by a narrow strip of land from the coastline. At the northern part of the Western Ghats, the height may vary from 900 to 1,200 m (3,000 to 3,900 ft), but in the south they reach a height of 2,637 m (8,652 ft) at Doda Beta, their highest peak.
The Malabar Coast is a coastline on the southwestern shore line of the mainland Indian subcontinent. Geographically, it comprises the wettest regions of southern India, as the Western Ghats intercept the moisture-laden monsoon rains, especially on their westward-facing mountain slopes. The term "Malabar Coast" is sometimes used to refer to the entire Indian coast from the western coast of Konkan to the tip of the subcontinent at Kanyakumari.
The region between the Eastern and Western Ghats is referred to as the Deccan Plateau. The east-sloping plateau is protected from the heavier rains by the two ranges, and has a dry season of between six and nine months.
The Deccan Plateau is a large plateau in western and southern India. It rises to 100 metres (330 ft) in the north, and to more than 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) in the south, forming a raised triangle within the South-pointing triangle of the Indian subcontinent's coastline.
