The Himalayas, which stretches 2,900 kilometers between India, Pakistan, China, and Nepal, is the world’s tallest mountain range. It contains Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain by peak elevation at 8,848 meters tall.

Millions of years ago, these mountain peaks didn’t exist.  The Asian continent was mostly intact, but India was an island floating off the coast of Australia. Around 220 million years ago, around the time that Pangaea was breaking apart, India started to move northwards. It traveled around 6,000 kilometers before it finally crashed  (convergent) into Asia around 40-50 million years ago. India’s coastline was denser and more firmly attached to the seabed so that’s why it went beneath the Asian one, moving the Asian landmass up, which resulted in the Himalayas.

The Himalayas are still rising by more than 1 cm per year as India
continues to move northwards into Asia, which explains the occurrence of shallow focus earthquakes in the region today.

Citations:

“GLOSSARY.” The Geological Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.

“How the Himalayas Were Formed.” Today I Found Out. N.p., 04 Dec. 2013. Web. 19 Jan. 2017.