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Hindu Kush
The rugged 800-km range dividing Central from South Asia
The Hindu Kush is one of Asia's great mountain barriers, an 800-kilometre chain of high, dry, intensely rugged peaks that walls off the Indian subcontinent from Central Asia. Stretching mainly through Afghanistan and into Pakistan, it carries the highest summits outside the Himalaya-Karakoram complex and has channelled armies, traders, and migrants through a handful of forbidding passes for millennia. Its name and its passes loom large in the history of conquest and the modern strategic geography of the region.
The range is the westward continuation of the great mountain knot where the Indian and Eurasian plates meet, and it remains seismically active, prone to deep and powerful earthquakes. Its highest peak, Tirich Mir in Pakistan, reaches about 7,708 metres, the loftiest point outside the Himalaya and Karakoram. The Hindu Kush is largely arid, with glaciers feeding rivers that water the valleys and the plains beyond, and its high passes, including the storied Khyber, have always been the keys to the region.
Through these passes came Alexander's armies, Central Asian conquerors, and the caravans linking India with the Silk Road, making the Hindu Kush a hinge of Eurasian history. Isolated valleys preserved distinct peoples and faiths, among them the Kalash of Pakistan with their pre-Islamic traditions. The range has remained a refuge and a battleground into modern times, its difficult terrain shaping the long wars of Afghanistan, even as its glaciers quietly sustain the water supply of millions downstream.