Indian Geography Quick Revision: Rivers, Mountains and Borders

Geography questions favour facts you can learn from a map and a few tables. Here is a compact revision guide.

The basics

Fact	Detail
Area	about 3.28 million square kilometres
Position	Northern Hemisphere, Eastern Hemisphere
Standard meridian	82°30′ E, used for Indian Standard Time
Tropic of Cancer	passes through eight states

Physical divisions

1. The Himalayas in the north: young fold mountains.
2. The Northern Plains: fertile land built by the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra.
3. The Peninsular Plateau: an old landmass including the Deccan.
4. The Coastal Plains along the east and west coasts.
5. The Thar Desert in the northwest.
6. The Islands: Andaman and Nicobar, and Lakshadweep.

Mountains and plateaus

Feature	Note
Kanchenjunga	the highest peak entirely in India
Western Ghats	run along the west coast
Eastern Ghats	broken hills along the east coast
Aravalli Range	one of the oldest fold mountains
Deccan Plateau	large plateau of the peninsula

Rivers

River	Notes
Ganga	the longest river in India, formed by the Bhagirathi and Alaknanda
Brahmaputra	rises in Tibet, flows through Assam
Indus	rises in Tibet, flows through Ladakh into Pakistan
Godavari	the longest peninsular river
Krishna, Kaveri, Mahanadi	major peninsular rivers
Narmada, Tapti	flow westward into the Arabian Sea

Peninsular rivers mostly flow east into the Bay of Bengal, while the Narmada and Tapti flow west.

Climate and monsoon

India's climate is dominated by the monsoon. The south-west monsoon (June to September) brings most of the rain. The north-east monsoon brings rain to parts of Tamil Nadu in winter. The seasons are commonly listed as summer, monsoon, post-monsoon (autumn) and winter.