The Arakan Mountains, natively referred as Rakhine Yoma (Burmese: ရခိုင်ရိုးမ) and technically known as the Southern Indo-Burman Range, are a mountain range in western Myanmar, between the coast of Rakhine State and the Central Myanmar Basin, in which flows the Irrawaddy River.

It is the most prominent of a series of parallel ridges that arc through Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Myanmar.

[1] The mountain chain is submerged in the Bay of Bengal for a long stretch and emerges again in the form of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

This played a role in fostering the separate development of the Rakhine people, both linguistically and culturally, from the Burmese.

[citation needed] The Arakan Mountains act as a barrier to the southwestern monsoon rains and thus shield the central Myanmar area, making their western slopes extraordinarily wet during the monsoon with typically over 1 metre (39 in) of rain per month, and the eastern slopes much drier.