| Whitewater Nepal |
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Himalayas The Himalayas are still being formed by an uplift of the earth's crust as two tectonic plates meet: the Eurasian plate being driven up on top of the Indian one. This means that the Himalayas are young, active, and still growing in height by up to one cm a year. The Himalaya is also an earthquake zone and hot springs may be found on the upper reaches of many rivers where the valleys cuts through a fault line. A lot of the geological history of the Himalayas can be read as you raft or paddle through the river gorges: rock strata, faults and synclines clearly exposed in the water-carved cliffs. The Himalayas were pushed up after the river systems had established themselves - this explains the strange way that many of the main rivers have headwaters on the North (wrong) side of the Himalayas. The rivers maintained their courses, established a system of antecedent drainage and eroded deeper and deeper gorges as the mountains kept growing: the upper valleys of the Arun and Kali Gandaki are some of the deepest land gorges on Earth. |