As you travel through the Himalayas you will meet people with different kinds of clothing, carrying different goods, displaying various religious symbols, and speaking many languages.  There are hundreds of ethnic groups, languages and settlements in the Himalayan region, but people throughout the region have learned to exploit the waterways and river valleys to meet their needs.  Therefore, to understand where you are in the Himalayas and who you are speaking with you really need to know only two basic pieces of information: which river system you are following and your relative elevation.

There are three great river systems that cut through the Himalayas: the Indus, the Ganges and the Tsangpo/Brahmaputra.  These rivers can each be divided into three regions based on elevation.  They all have their headwaters on the Tibetan Plateau and cut through the high Himalayas, all three pass rapidly through the mid-montane region and finally all of the rivers flow more gently from the mountains onto the lower elevation plains. 

People have developed unique strategies to live along each of these waterways and within each elevation region.  In this unit you will have the opportunity, as a class, to explore the three elevation regions along the three major river systems of the Himalayas.  As an individual, however, you will only be responsible for one portion of this material, a single river system at a single elevation region.

To continue through the unit click here.