SahYadri.....

“Do not follow a regular path, but don’t excite too much to forget it”

Sahyadri Mountains, is a mountain range along the western side of India. It runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau, and separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain along the Arabian Sea. The Western Ghats block rainfall to the Deccan Plateau. The range starts near the border of Gujarat and Maharashtra, south of the River Tapti, and runs approximately 1600 km through the states of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala ending at Kanyakumari, at the southern tip of India. About sixty percent of the Western Ghats are located in the state of Karnataka.These hills cover 1,60,000 km² and form the catchment area for a complex of river systems that drain almost 40% of India.The average elevation is around 1,200 metres (3,900 ft).The area is one of the world’s ten "Hottest biodiversity hotspots" and has over 5000 species of flowering plants, 139 mammal species, 508 bird species and 179 amphibian species. At least 325 globally threatened species occur in the Western Ghats.

The Western Ghats are not true mountains, but are the faulted edge of the Deccan Plateau. They are believed to have been formed during the break-up of the super continent of Gondwana some 150 million years ago.

Basalt is the predominant rock found in the hills reaching a depth of 3 km (2 mi). Other rock types found are charnockites, granite gneiss, khondalites, leptynites, metamorphic gneisses with detached occurrences of crystalline limestone, iron ore, dolerites and anorthosites. Residual laterite and bauxite ores are also found in the southern hills.

This range is home to many hill stations like Matheran, Lonavala-Khandala, Mahabaleshwar, Panchgani, Amboli Ghat, Kudremukh and Kodagu. The range is called Sahyadri in northern Maharashtra and Sahya Parvatam in Kerala.

Peaks:-
Salher (Maharashtra), Kalsubai (Maharashtra), Mahableshwar (Maharashtra), Sonsogor (Goa), Kemmangundi (Karnataka), Tadiandamol (Karnataka), Mullayanagiri (Karnataka), Kudremukh (Karnataka), Pushpagiri (Karnataka), Kumara Parvatha (Karnataka), Doddabetta (Tamil Nadu) & Anai Mudi (Kerala).

This was just about the Sahyadri.In next post I will be writing about the forts , rivers and place to see in Sahyadri….