In the middle of the great curve of the Himalayan mountains lie the 8,000 m (26,000 ft) peaks of Dhaulagiri and Annapurna in Nepal, separated by the Kali Gandaki Gorge.

The gorge splits the Himalayas into Western and Eastern sections, both ecologically and orographically – the pass at the head of the Kali Gandaki, the Kora La, is the lowest point on the ridgeline between Everest and K2 (the highest peak of the Karakoram range).

Further west, the border with India follows the Sarda River and provides a trade route into China, where on the Tibetan plateau lies the high peak of Gurla Mandhata.

The next Himalayan Indian state, Himachal Pradesh, is noted for its hill stations, particularly Shimla, the summer capital of the British Raj, and Dharamsala, the centre of the Tibetan community and government in exile in India.

Finally, the Himalayas reach their western end in the dramatic 8000 m peak of Nanga Parbat, which rises over 8,000 m (26,000 ft) above the Indus valley and is the most westerly of the 8000 m summits.

The western end terminates at a magnificent point near Nanga Parbat where the Himalayas intersect with the Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges, in the disputed Pakistani-administered territory of Gilgit-Baltistan.

Some portion of the Himalayas, such as the Kaghan Valley, Margalla Hills, and Galyat tract, extend into the Pakistani provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.

Since both plates were composed of low density continental crust, they were thrust faulted and folded into mountain ranges rather than subducting into the mantle along an oceanic trench.

[18] An often-cited fact used to illustrate this process is that the summit of Mount Everest is made of unmetamorphosed marine Ordovician limestone with fossil trilobites, crinoids, and ostracods from this ancient ocean.

[33] The great ranges of central Asia, including the Himalayas, contain the third-largest deposit of ice and snow in the world, after Antarctica and the Arctic.

[38] The higher regions of the Himalayas are snowbound throughout the year, in spite of their proximity to the tropics, and they form the sources of several large perennial rivers.

In recent years, scientists have monitored a notable increase in the rate of glacier retreat across the region as a result of climate change.

[35] Although the effect of this will not be known for many years, it potentially could mean disaster for the hundreds of millions of people who rely on the glaciers to feed the rivers during the dry seasons.

[45] Pangong Tso, which is spread across the border between India and China, at the far western end of Tibet, is among the largest with a surface area of 700 km2 (270 sq mi).

Many mid and low altitude lakes remain poorly studied in terms of their hydrology and biodiversity, like Khecheopalri in the Sikkim Eastern Himalayas.

[50] The evidence is unmistakable in the Brahmaputra valley as the warm air from the Bay of Bengal bottlenecks and rushes up past Namcha Barwa, the eastern anchor of the Himalayas, and into southeastern Tibet.

Variability in monsoon rainfall, influenced by local Hadley circulation and tropical sea surface temperatures, is the main factor behind wet and dry years.

[51] In the winter, a high-pressure system forms and remains suspended above Central Asia, forcing air to flow in the southerly direction over the Himalayas.

If the Paris Agreement goals are broken, then the region is expected to warm by 1.7–2.4 °C in the near future (2036–2065) and by 2.2–3.3 °C (2066–2095) near the end of the century under the "intermediate" Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5).

Under the high-warming RCP8.5 scenario where the annual emissions continue to increase for the rest of the century, the expected regional warming is 2.3–3.2 °C and 4.2–6.5 °C, respectively.

This diversity of altitude, rainfall, and soil conditions, combined with the very high snow line, supports a variety of distinct plant and animal communities.

Its prey includes members of the goat family grazing on the alpine pastures and living on the rocky terrain, notably the endemic bharal or Himalayan blue sheep.

In the mountainous mixed deciduous and conifer forests of the eastern Himalayas, red pandas feed in the dense understories of bamboo.

[65] Similar to the mountains, the communities living near the Himalayas are experiencing climate change and its negative impacts significantly more than other parts of the world.

[67] These impacts can have extreme negative effects on the villages living in the area especially as the temperatures rise at higher rates than many other places in the world (Alexander et al., 2014).

Recent studies have shown that dengue fever has had a consistent pattern of epidemic in Nepal in the years 2010, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 with the largest in terms of severity occurring in 2022.

This pathway heavily relies on reducing emissions from energy sources while preserving the carbon-absorbing capacity of the LULUCF (Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry) sector.

[76] In recent years many citizens of these Himalayan communities have started to notice the extreme effects of climate change by experiencing nature itself.

It is believed that after Rishabhanatha attained nirvana, his son, Bharata, had constructed three stupas and twenty four shrines of the 24 tirthankaras with their idols studded with precious stones over there and named it Sinhnishdha.

[87] A number of Vajrayana Buddhist sites are situated in the Himalayas, in Tibet, Bhutan, and in the Indian regions of Ladakh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Spiti, and Darjeeling.