NCERT Solutions for Class 5th The World Around Us Chapter 6 Western Ghats — Write
Book page 105–106 Updated on2026-09-19
Q1.
Look at the map, locate the Western Ghats and name the six states it passes through.
Map of India. The green hill marks show the Western Ghats along the west coast.
Answer
The six states are Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
How to find the Western Ghats on the map, step by step.
Open the physical map of India — the one with green plains and brown hills.
Find the western coastline, the one along the Arabian Sea.
Just inland from that coast you will see a long brown ridge running down the map, almost parallel to the sea.
That ridge is the Western Ghats. It begins near the Tapi river in the north and ends near Kanyakumari in the south — about 1,600 km in all.
Now run your finger down the ridge and name each state it passes through, from north to south.
Order from north to south
State
What lies there
1
Gujarat
The northern end, near the Tapi river
2
Maharashtra
The Sahyadri hills; Mahabaleshwar, Bhimashankar
3
Goa
A short, very green stretch with the Dudhsagar falls
4
Karnataka
Kodagu (Coorg), Agumbe, Bandipur, Kudremukh
5
Kerala
Silent Valley, Periyar, Eravikulam; the Palakkad gap
6
Tamil Nadu
The Nilgiris and the Anamalai hills; Mudumalai
Why these hills matter so much: The Western Ghats stand like a wall in the path of the monsoon wind blowing in from the Arabian Sea. The wind is forced to rise up the slope, cools, and drops its rain on the western side. That is why Kerala and coastal Karnataka are so green and wet, and why the land just behind the hills is much drier. The same hills are the birthplace of most of the rivers of south India.
Two ranges, not one: India's other coastal range, along the Bay of Bengal side, is the Eastern Ghats. Those are lower and broken into pieces, cut through by big rivers. The Western Ghats are higher and almost unbroken — except at one wide gap in Kerala, the Palakkad gap.
Q2.
What animals can you spot in the forest?
Answer
Look carefully at the big picture on page 106 and name what is actually drawn there, from the top of the picture down.
Where in the picture
What you can see
What it is
On the tree branch, top left
An orange-brown monkey with a mane round its face and a long tail
A monkey — the book names the lion-tailed macaque, found only in the Western Ghats
On the same branch, to the right
A tall grey-and-white bird with a heavy yellow bill
A large water bird — a stork
On the rock, left
A spotted golden cat crouching
A leopard
Behind the rock
A dark brown deer standing high up
A sambar deer
Centre left
A reddish deer with branched antlers
A deer (spotted deer / barking deer)
Centre
A grey animal with a trunk and tusks, at the stream
An elephant
Top right, on the cliff
A grey goat-like animal standing on a rocky ledge
The Nilgiri tahr, the wild goat of these hills
Flying, centre
A blue bird with long tail feathers; a red-and-white bird
Forest birds
Right side, on the plants
A dark bird with a white throat; a small red-breasted bird; a blue bird lower down
More forest birds
Bottom left
A long striped snake round the tree root; a green frog on the wet rock
A snake and a frog
A short answer: monkeys (lion-tailed macaque), leopard, elephant, deer, Nilgiri tahr, snake, frog and many forest birds
Why so many kinds in one picture: The Western Ghats are a nature's hotspot. The hills catch heavy rain, so food grows all year; and the ridge is so long that it holds cold high ground, warm low ground, wet slopes and dry slopes all at once. Different animals fit into different corners of it. Many of them — the lion-tailed macaque, the Nilgiri tahr, the Malabar giant squirrel — live here and nowhere else on Earth.
Honest note: the book prints the picture without labels, and the artist has drawn the monkey orange, whereas a real lion-tailed macaque is black with a grey mane round its face. Say what you can see first, then give the name your book gives. That is how a careful learner works.
Q3.
What are the people doing in the picture given below?
The picture on page 106, redrawn.
Answer
They are collecting forest produce — bending down among the low plants beside the stream, gathering herbs, spices and other useful plants. On the right of the picture their collection is spread out on the ground.
Where in the picture
What the people are doing
Bottom left, two people in hats
Bending over the plants near the water and picking leaves — collecting herbs and medicine plants
Bottom right
What they have gathered, laid out: heaps of turmeric and chilli, bundles of cinnamon bark, cane baskets of ground spice, black pepper, jars of honey, a star-shaped spice, cardamom plants
Middle right, on the hill
Two more people walking up the hill path
So the answer in one line: the people are gathering plants, herbs, spices and honey from the forest — the work that forest-dwelling communities of the Western Ghats have done for generations.
Why this work matters here: Page 107 explains it. These hills have many plants used in traditional medicine, and many of them grow nowhere else. Tribal communities and other forest-dwelling people have lived here for generations and depend on the forest and its plants for food, medicine and their livelihood — that is, for the work that earns them a living. They gather; they do not clear the forest. If the plants are finished, so is the work.
Also on these pages: a group of students with notebooks and cameras doing a survey. Working with schools, farmers and experts, they found and recorded more than 200 kinds of mango in the Western Ghats, and have moved on to jackfruit and jamun.
Q4.
Why do you think forts were built on hilltops instead of flat land?
Answer
Because a fort on a hilltop is far easier to defend and far harder to attack. Look at the little stepped wall drawn on the far hillside in the picture on page 106 — that is a hill fort.
Reason
Why it helped
You can see far
Guards spot an approaching army hours before it arrives, and light a signal fire to warn the next fort
The enemy has to climb
Soldiers arrive tired, slow and out of breath, carrying heavy weapons uphill
Only one narrow way up
A big army cannot spread out. A few defenders can hold a narrow path against many
Gravity is on your side
Arrows, stones and hot oil go downhill easily. Everything the attacker throws must go up
The rock is a free wall
Steep cliffs on three sides mean walls are needed only where the slope is gentle
Hard to surround
Cutting off supplies to a hill is difficult, and forts kept rock-cut water tanks and grain stores
It can be seen from far away
A fort on a hill is a standing sign of who rules that land
Why the Western Ghats have so many: These hills stand between the coast and the plateau, and all the trade routes had to squeeze through their passes. Whoever held the hilltop held the pass. Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj built his kingdom on exactly this idea, using forts such as Raigad, Pratapgad and Sinhagad. His soldiers knew every goat track on those slopes, so they could move fast where a large army could not move at all.
The trade-off: a hilltop fort was safe but hard to live in. Everything — water, grain, firewood, even stone — had to be carried up. That is why forts had deep rock-cut tanks to catch rain, and huge granaries inside.