The Great Subcontinent

In geological terms, the Subcontinent is a story almost too good to be true. A hundred million years ago, it was attached to the eastern part of Africa, but then it gradually separated, floating atop a tectonic plate moving slowly north-northeast across what was then the Sea of Tethys. Around forty million years ago, this floating subcontinental plate collided with the Asian plate, and when these two giants met, like two speeding vehicles meeting head on, they collided with such force that the sea bottom around their edges rose and buckled. On the Asian side of the collision (present-day Tibet), the land rose up into a plateau almost three miles high, and on the Subcontinent side, the land rippled up into ranges of mountains, the highest mountains in the world, the Himalaya and the Karakoram.