Physiographic Divisions of India for UPSC

By Dooit UPSC expert · 26 August 2026 · 12 min read

If Indian geography feels like an endless list of ranges, plateaus and rivers, the fix is simple: learn the six physiographic divisions first, and every other fact will find its home. This is the master map on which the whole of GS Paper 1 physical geography hangs.

In three decades of mentoring aspirants, I have seen a recurring pattern. The candidate who struggles with geography is almost never short of facts — they are short of a framework to hang those facts on. They memorise that the Chambal is a tributary of the Yamuna, that the Western Ghats are older than the Himalayas, that Barren Island is a volcano, and yet none of it sticks, because it is stored as loose scraps. The physiographic divisions are that framework. Master them once, and current affairs about a landslide in the hills, a flood in the plains or a cyclone on the coast will slot instantly into place.

India's landmass has been grouped, in the standard classification you find in the NCERT, into six great divisions. Let us take them one at a time, and I will point out exactly where the examiner tends to probe.

1. The Himalayan Mountains

The Himalayas are young fold mountains, thrown up by the ongoing collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. Because that collision has not stopped, the Himalayas are still rising and remain seismically the most active region in the country — a fact that connects straight to disaster-management questions on earthquakes. Running in a great arc of about 2,400 km from the Indus in the west to the Brahmaputra in the east, they are best understood as three parallel longitudinal ranges.

• Himadri (Greater Himalayas) — the northernmost, loftiest and most continuous range, holding the highest peaks. This is the perennially snow-bound core from which the great Himalayan rivers rise.
• Himachal (Lesser or Middle Himalayas) — the middle range, home to famous hill stations and valleys such as the Kashmir Valley, and to well-known mountain resorts.
• Shiwaliks (Outer Himalayas) — the southernmost and lowest range, made of unconsolidated sediment washed down by rivers. The longitudinal valleys lying between the Shiwaliks and the Lesser Himalayas are called Duns — Dehra Dun is the classic example.

Two exam-favourite terms belong here. Where the Himalayas bend sharply at their western and eastern ends, we call the turns syntaxial bends. And moving from west to east — Punjab Himalaya, Kumaon Himalaya, Nepal Himalaya, Assam Himalaya — the ranges are divided regionally by the rivers that cut through them. The highest peak lying entirely within India is Kanchenjunga (about 8,586 metres) in Sikkim; remember that K2, though higher, lies in the Pakistan-administered part of the disputed Kashmir region and so is not a peak wholly inside Indian territory.

2. The Northern Plains

South of the mountains lie the Northern Plains, built entirely of alluvium deposited over millions of years by three river systems — the Indus, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra — and their tributaries. This is one of the most intensively farmed and densely populated regions on Earth, and its fertility is the single biggest reason the Indo-Gangetic belt has been the heartland of Indian civilisation. For the exam, learn the plains through two lenses: their east–west sections and their relief features.

From west to east the plains are grouped as the Punjab Plains (built by the Indus and its tributaries, and marked by doabs, the land between two rivers), the Ganga Plains (the largest stretch, spanning several states), and the Brahmaputra Plains in the northeast. According to relief, from the foothills southward, the belt is divided into four strips whose names are a reliable source of prelims questions:

• Bhabar — a narrow belt of pebbles along the foothills where streams disappear underground.
• Terai — the marshy, re-emergent, formerly forested belt just south of the Bhabar.
• Bhangar — the older alluvium forming slightly elevated terraces, often containing calcareous deposits called kankar.
• Khadar — the newer, fertile alluvium of the floodplains, renewed almost every year by fresh silt.

The distinction between Bhangar and Khadar is the classic "one-liner" the examiner loves — old alluvium versus new alluvium. Anchor it firmly.

3. The Peninsular Plateau

Here is the oldest part of India. The Peninsular Plateau is a tableland of ancient igneous and metamorphic rocks — a stable block, part of the old Gondwana landmass, and therefore tectonically far quieter than the restless Himalayas. It broadly splits into two:

• The Central Highlands — lying north of the Narmada, covering the Malwa Plateau and bounded by ranges such as the Vindhyas and the Aravallis. The Aravalli Range, incidentally, is one of the oldest fold mountain systems in the world, now worn down to low residual hills.
• The Deccan Plateau — the broad triangular block south of the Narmada, flanked by the Western and Eastern Ghats.

The two Ghats are a permanent exam theme, so contrast them cleanly. The Western Ghats (also called the Sahyadris) run continuously along the west coast, are higher, receive heavy orographic rainfall, and form an unbroken wall that rivers must cross through passes — Anaimudi, in the Western Ghats, is the highest peak of Peninsular India. The Eastern Ghats, by contrast, are lower, discontinuous, and dissected by the great east-flowing rivers such as the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri. One more high-yield fact: much of the northwestern Deccan is covered by thick layers of black basaltic lava — the Deccan Traps — which weather into the fertile black soil so important for cotton.

4. The Indian Desert

To the northwest of the Aravallis lies the Thar Desert (the Great Indian Desert), an undulating sandy plain of low dunes. It receives very little rainfall — generally below 150 mm a year — and most of its streams are ephemeral, appearing only during the rare rains and vanishing again. The Luni is the only significant river of the region, and even it is seasonal. Crescent-shaped dunes called barchans are widespread. For the exam, the desert is a compact, high-return topic: few features, but each one — arid climate, ephemeral drainage, the Luni, barchans — is precisely the sort of crisp detail prelims rewards.

5. The Coastal Plains

Flanking the Peninsular Plateau on either side are the Coastal Plains, and the examiner expects you to separate the two coasts sharply.

• The Western Coastal Plain is narrow, and is a submergent coast — which is why it offers natural harbours and ports. It is divided, from north to south, into the Konkan coast, the Kannad plain and the Malabar coast. The lagoons (locally called kayals) of the Malabar coast in Kerala are a signature feature.
• The Eastern Coastal Plain is broader and is an emergent coast, formed by the sediment of the great east-flowing rivers, which build wide, fertile deltas. Its northern part is the Northern Circars and its southern part the Coromandel coast. Chilika Lake, India's largest coastal lagoon, lies along this eastern shore.

The one-line contrast to lock in: the western coast is narrow, submergent and harbour-rich; the eastern coast is broad, emergent and delta-rich. That single sentence has answered many an objective question.

6. The Islands

India has two major island groups, and confusing which sits in which sea is an avoidable error.

• The Andaman and Nicobar Islands lie in the Bay of Bengal. They are larger, more numerous, and are of volcanic and tectonic origin — an elevated continuation of a submarine mountain range. Crucially, Barren Island, in this group, is the only active volcano in India. Indira Point, on the Nicobar group, is the southernmost point of India's territory.
• The Lakshadweep Islands lie in the Arabian Sea. They are small coral islands built on atolls, low-lying and fragile, which is why they feature so often in current affairs on climate change and sea-level rise.

The clean memory hook: Andaman & Nicobar → Bay of Bengal → volcanic; Lakshadweep → Arabian Sea → coral. Get that pairing automatic and you will never lose the easy island question.

The six divisions at a glance

Before you close this page, burn this comparison into memory. If you can reproduce this table from scratch, you have effectively covered the physiographic skeleton of Indian geography.

How this topic actually appears in the exam

Do not study the divisions as an end in themselves — study how UPSC questions them. In Prelims, the pattern is factual precision: matching a landform to its region, identifying the correct sequence of ranges or coastal strips, or a statement-based question on whether a peak, pass or island is correctly located. In Mains GS Paper 1, the physical framework becomes the base for analytical questions — the relationship between physiography and monsoon rainfall, why particular regions are prone to landslides or floods, how relief shapes agriculture and population distribution. And in the interplay with current affairs, this map is constantly in use: a border-infrastructure story sits on the Himalayas, a delta-flooding story on the eastern coast, a coral-bleaching story on Lakshadweep.

The complementary skill is map work. Keep a physical map of India open beside you and physically trace each division as you revise. When you read the newspaper, locate the place first — this quiet daily habit is what separates a candidate who "knows" geography from one who can actually deploy it under exam pressure. If you have already worked through our note on the drainage system of India, notice how neatly the rivers map onto the divisions you have just learned: Himalayan rivers rise in the Himadri, Peninsular rivers drain the plateau, and the coastal plains are simply where they finally meet the sea.

A simple three-pass revision plan

Physical geography rewards spaced repetition more than almost any other section, because it is dense with names that fade quickly. Here is the sequence I have recommended to aspirants for years:

1. First pass — understand. Read each division slowly, understanding why each landform exists (fold mountains from collision, plains from deposition, plateau from ancient rock). Understanding makes the facts far stickier than rote learning.
2. Second pass — map. Redraw a rough outline of India and mark every division, range, coast and island group from memory. Correct your gaps against a real map.
3. Third pass — test. Attempt objective questions and a couple of previous-year prelims items on Indian geography. The mistakes you make here tell you precisely where your framework is still thin.

Cycle through these three passes a few times over the year, spacing them out, and this topic will move from something you "revise" into something you simply know. That is the quiet confidence that shows up on exam day.