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WONDERS OF NATURE
Himalayas. Nature miracle
From the French Alps to South Vietnam, the longest mountain belt on Earth stretches across Eurasia. And the highest part of this gigantic chain of mountains bears the ancient name of the Himalayas. Translated from Sanskrit, this word means "abode of snows." The Himalayas border the world's highest Tibetan plateau in a giant jagged arc from the south, separating India from Central Asia. From the west and east, the borders of this range are the deep gorges of the great rivers of Asia - the Indus and the Brahmaputra.
In its form, the Himalayas resemble a grandiose petrified wave, which to the south, towards the Indo-Gangetic lowland, falls in three successively decreasing steep ledges, and to the north, towards Tibet, only one more gentle one. The crest of this wave is the snowy peaks of the Great Himalayas, among which are ten of the fourteen largest mountains of our planet, which have risen to eight or more kilometers. (Another four "eight-thousanders" are located in the northwestern continuation of the Himalayas - the Karakoram range.) Approaching the Himalayas from the south, from India, we will not see the expected gigantic mountain masses. Before our eyes, only low hills with rounded soft outlines will appear, dressed in luxurious tropical forests - terai. This is the first ledge - the Sivalik ridge, or the Himalayas, rising only a kilometer above sea level. It borders the southern foot of the Himalayas with a narrow green strip, rising above the swampy plain. Climbing the pass through Sivalik, the traveler notices a high ridge ahead, rising for three or four kilometers and pleasing the eye with spectacular rocky peaks, reminiscent of the ruins of ancient castles, towers and fortresses. But this is still only the Lesser Himalayas, or, as this range is called in India, the Mahabharat. And only having climbed the rocky ridge of these already relatively high mountains, somewhat reminiscent of the Caucasus, you finally see a good hundred kilometers further, the majestic white wall of the Great Himalayas raised high above the greenery of the valleys. Between the Small and Large Himalayas, at a height of one to one and a half kilometers, there are longitudinal valleys, which are the bottoms of former glacial lakes. The largest of them are the Kathmandu Valley and the Kashmir Valley. Snow-capped mountain peaks, deep rocky gorges, turbulent waterfall rivers and blue lakes surrounded by picturesque forests make these valleys the most beautiful corners of the globe. But first of all, the majestic chain of the Great Himalayas attracts the eye. Despite the fact that you are not in a gorge, but in a vast open space, the hat literally falls off your head - these mountains are so monstrously high. Above the Nepalese Kathmandu valley, the bottom of which lies at a height of a thousand meters above sea level, they rise seven kilometers! You won't see this anywhere else in the world. High impregnable mountains have long evoked two feelings in people: fear and reverence. The Hindus called this area Deviabhuni - "the land of the gods". Here, in their opinion, was the center of the Earth, marked by the sacred mountain Meru, around which the Sun, Moon and stars revolve. Meru in India was identified with Mount Kailash in the Tibetan Trans-Himalayas. Next to it, at the sacred lake Manasarovar, as the locals believe, lives the main of the three supreme gods of the Hindu pantheon - Indra, the thunderer, who gives rain and fertility to the fields. Another great god, Shiva, lives nearby, on Mount Gaurisankar. And only Rama settled closer to people, in the valley. By the way, the founder of another powerful religion - Buddhism, Prince Gautama himself (the future Buddha) was also born here, in Nepal, 2500 years ago. Therefore, many pilgrims come every year here, to the shrine of Buddhism, the Muktinath temple, where an eternal flame burns in memory of the birth of a deity. Sky-high ridges hide many secrets and mysteries. One of them is connected with the mysterious yeti, or "snow demon", whose homeland is, according to the stories of the highlanders living here - Sherpas and Bhotiyas - somewhere in the area of Chomolungma. Many of the locals, and even some climbers who have been here, report that they saw either the Bigfoot itself, or its tracks, or heard strange piercing cries that none of the animals known to them could make. And the English climber Eric Shipton managed to photograph a chain of footprints on one of the glaciers, clearly belonging to an upright bipedal creature of enormous size. (The length of the tracks reached forty-five centimeters!) Half a century has passed since then, but new reliable evidence of the existence of the yeti has not been found. So the mystery of the Bigfoot remains unsolved, like the mystery of Loch Ness. Geologists associate the formation of the Himalayan mountainous country with the split of a single southern mainland - Gondwana into several plates. One of them, the Indian one, began to move north and collided with the Eurasian plate. At the point of collision, the earth's crust shrunk and formed a giant fold - the Himalayas. Its growth, by the way, continues to this day. Every year, the Himalayas become three to ten millimeters taller. Now in the mightiest mountain range of the world, there are seventy-five peaks more than seven kilometers "in height". And in its highest part - the Nepalese Himalayas - nine mountains rise to eight thousand meters and higher. Among them is the highest peak in the world, which in Nepal is called Sagarmatha ("Lord of the Sky"), and in Tibet they call Chomolungma ("Goddess - Mother of the World"). Already by the names it is clear that the peoples of the Himalayas deified this peak, not even suspecting that it is the highest point of our planet. After all, only in 1852 did English topographers establish the exact height of Peak XV, as they called it at that time. Later, the mountain was named after Major George Everest, Chief of the Survey of India. So the highest mountain in the world lives now under three names. It is clear that the climbers of the late XIX - early XX century, who have already managed to conquer the Matterhorn in the Alps (in 1865), Chimborazo and Aconcagua in the Andes (in 1880 and 1897), McKinley in Alaska (in 1913) and Kilimanjaro in Africa (in 1889), were eager to climb Chomolungma. But the Tibetan and Nepalese authorities until 1921 did not allow foreigners to disturb the peace of the sacred mountains. In 1921-1924, the famous English climber George Mallory made three expeditions to the sky-high peak, hoping to become its winner. In his last attempt, in 1924, he and his companion Irwin apparently reached the highest point on the planet. The members of their expedition who remained below noticed the brave deuce through binoculars just two hundred meters from the top, after which they were hidden by fog. No one else saw the pioneers of Chomolungma alive. They did not return back. And only seventy-five years later, in 1999, Mallory's body was found in the snow not far from the summit. In all likelihood, on the descent, the climbers got into a snowstorm and froze. The successful assault on Chomolungma took place only thirty years after the tragic attempt of Mallory and Irwin. In 1953, Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander, and Tenzing, a Nepalese highlander Sherpa, set foot on the top of the mountain. Thus, the "high-altitude pole" of our planet turned out to be the toughest nut to crack out of all the cherished and hard-to-reach points of the earth's land, taken by storm in the XNUMXth century. Recall that the North and South Poles were conquered by man more than forty years earlier, and the Arctic Pole of Inaccessibility - five years before Chomolungma. In general, the history of the assault on the Himalayan "eight-thousanders" is a whole epic that lasted fifteen years, starting in 1950, when the brave Frenchmen Erzog and Lachenal climbed the first of them - Annapurna, and ending with the successful ascent of the most difficult of these peaks - Mount Shisha Pangma - Chinese expedition in 1964. Many tragic pages are inscribed in the history of Himalayan ascents. Dozens of climbers remained forever on the slopes of the Abode of Snows. And yet every year new high-altitude expeditions go to the Himalayas. And to the question of what drives them to this most difficult and dangerous business, Mallory answered wonderfully. When asked why he is so eager to climb Everest, he simply said: "Because he is!" There are peaks in the Himalayas that are more difficult than Chomolungma. Such, for example, is impregnable Kanchenjunga, the easternmost and second highest of the Himalayan "eight-thousanders", which rises to 8585 meters at the very border of Nepal and India. This most difficult peak for climbers gave up only by the fifth expedition, which stormed it in 1955. In the same year, the fifth highest peak in the world, Makalu (8470 meters), was also conquered. Its name translates as "Black Giant". Indeed, Makalu is so steep that ice and snow practically do not linger on the black slopes of this giant rock pyramid. Therefore, its black and gray silhouette stands out sharply against the background of the rest of the Himalayan peaks, wrapped in snow-white cloaks and covered with glacier caps. And twenty-five kilometers northwest of Makalu there are four eight-kilometer peaks at once, like a guard of honor surrounding their ruler, Chomolungma. This gigantic mountain range resembles a frozen foamy surf of grandiose stone shafts rushing towards the sky. Moreover, the "smaller" mountains in this massif sometimes pose the most difficult tasks for climbers. So, at Mount Rapakosi, 7788 meters high, the steepest slope in the world. It rises six thousand meters above the Hunza valley, and the length of its slope is about ten kilometers. It is easy to calculate that the angle of elevation in this case is thirty-one degrees! In the very north of Nepal, between the eight-kilometer massifs of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri, there is the high-altitude Mustang Valley - the most important ancient caravan route from India and Nepal to sky-high Tibet. Through a giant gap between the mountains, as if into a wind tunnel, a strong wind rushes in from the north, from the Brahmaputra valley. "Draft" begins, like clockwork, every day at noon and ends after sunset, when the air temperature from the south and north sides of the Mustang is equal. Living in a constant wind, of course, creates terrible discomfort for the inhabitants of the valley. They have to build houses with very narrow windows, and even these are covered with oiled paper from the inside for warmth. And on the north side of the houses there are no windows at all, otherwise it is impossible to keep the heat in the rooms. In the Himalayas, the traveler is always struck by the sharp transition from the suffocating, sticky heat in the foothill valleys to the snowy passes and peaks at an altitude of six to eight kilometers above sea level. Often the path from the rainforest to the white peaks is within a hundred kilometers. True, forests approach the foot of the mountains only in the Eastern Himalayas. The jungles of this part of the range are typical tropical rainforests with vines and ferns, bananas and palms, bamboo and teak. This is the realm of tigers and wild elephants, snakes and monkeys. Zoologists believe that it is here that the highest density of the elephant population in the world. Animals feel completely safe in the jungle, even more so than in African reserves. After all, according to Buddhist laws, killing any living being is a mortal sin. Only from a height of 1200 meters, more northern species begin to join the purely tropical plants: oaks, maples, birches, chestnuts. Among the southern species, magnolias and laurels become predominant. But even at an altitude of two kilometers, tropical trees are found next to northern ones. Nowhere else in the world, except perhaps in New Zealand, palms, magnolias and their counterparts in the tropics do not climb so high into the mountains. Above, the forests already consist of nothing but oaks and magnolias, with giant tree-like rhododendrons adjoining occasionally. They are replaced closer to three thousand meters by long thin bamboo. Since clouds are usually kept in the zone between two and three kilometers, the forest here is constantly in fog, and therefore all tree trunks, their branches and even the thinnest twigs are shrouded in a fluffy blanket of moss. They hang down in graceful garlands, and the green realm of the forest takes on a furry, some kind of plush look. And starting from a height of three kilometers, the slopes are covered with coniferous forests of slender Himalayan firs. Gradually, the firs thin out, more and more space is occupied by stones, and forests are replaced by lush alpine meadows with blooming primroses and edelweiss. And, finally, from a height of five and a half kilometers, the realm of snow begins. We see a completely different picture in the Western Himalayas, in the upper reaches of the Indus and the Ganges. There, at the foot of the mountains, there is a desert plain, reminiscent of the Kazakh plateau Ustyurt or Dzungaria. Only on the slopes of the foothills do rare groups of dry-loving plants appear, such as oleander or tree-like milkweed, very similar to a cactus from afar. And only from a height of a thousand meters do luxurious pine forests begin with an undergrowth of prickly jasmine, which literally stuns the traveler with its sharp, intoxicating smell. Above, in the zone from 1800 to 2500 meters, there are already humid subtropical forests of evergreen oaks and Himalayan cedar, a brother of the Lebanese cedar known since biblical times. Under them, ferns grow in a lush carpet. And having risen to a height of two and a half kilometers, you find yourself in a zone of spruce forests, exactly the same as in the Northern Urals or in the Khibiny, only with an undergrowth of blackberries and barberries. Only these shrubs, and ivy entwining tree trunks, together with climbing roses, remind us of the subtropics. Spruce forests are replaced with height by a real mountain desert, where even stunted grass comes across only in places. And all this is crowned, as always in the Himalayas, by snow and glaciers. Both India and Nepal have created several National Parks on the slopes and in the valleys of the majestic mountains, wanting to help the rare animals of the Himalayas survive in the face of an ever-increasing influx of tourists, including many poachers. Deforestation by the local population harms the animals even more. Already, only twenty-five wild elephants have survived in all of Nepal. Just a few dozen left here tigers and rhinos. They also live on protected lands and such rare animals as the snow leopard and the Himalayan black bear, the musk deer and the inhabitant of the bamboo forests - the red panda. This beast (also called a cat bear) is probably the most charming inhabitant of the Himalayan forests. During the day, he sleeps, wrapping his round, eared head with a fluffy tail, and at night he grazes in bamboo thickets, eating young shoots, as well as berries and acorns that have fallen to the ground. To truly appreciate the beauty of the nature of the Himalayas, one must overcome the temptation to get by air directly to Kathmandu or another city in the depths of the mountains. It is better to climb to the snowy ridges by car along winding mountain roads through Sivalik and Mahabharat. Only then can one appreciate all the diversity of the Himalayas, all the charm of its forests and meadows, rocky gorges and mountain lakes, the blinding whiteness of the snowy slopes and the jade transparency of glacial cliffs. And then, stopping at the next waterfall, scoop up a handful of icy water and take two or three sips with pleasure, as if giving this oath to return to these beautiful and majestic mountains one more time. Author: B.Wagner
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