NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 3 End-of-chapter exercise — Questions, activities and projects

Book page 58 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

In what type of landform is your town / village / city located? Which features mentioned in this chapter do you see around you?

Answer

Your answer must describe your own place. Work it out in two steps.

Step 1 — decide the landform. Use the chapter's own tests:

If you see …	You are in a …
Flat land in every direction, no hills, deep soft soil, fields of rice or wheat, canals, a slow wide river	Plain
Land that is high but flat-topped, rock close to the surface, thin reddish or black soil, a steep drop somewhere at the edge, quarries or mines nearby	Plateau
Steep slopes, winding roads, valleys with fast streams, terraced fields, pine or deodar forest, cold winters	Mountains or hills
Sand, very little rain, thorny shrubs, camels	Desert

Step 2 — list the chapter's features you can actually point to, such as: altitude, summit, slope, valley, terrace farming, montane forest, river, floodplain, sediments, confluence, sea level, plateau edge, waterfall, mining, precipitation as rain or snow.

Sample answer (a town in the Ganga plain): “Our town, Ballia, is in the Ganga plain. The land is flat everywhere and the soil is deep and soft, exactly as the chapter says sediments make it. The Ganga flows past the town in a broad channel with sandy banks, and every year it floods some fields and leaves fresh silt. Almost everyone farms — paddy, wheat and mustard — and some families fish in the river. There is no hill within a hundred kilometres, and I have never seen snow, only rain and sometimes hail.”

Sample answer (a town on the Chhota Nagpur Plateau): “Ranchi is on the Chhota Nagpur Plateau, about 650 m above sea level. The land is high but mostly level on top, with rock showing through the reddish soil and big boulders in the fields. A short drive away the plateau ends in a steep edge, and the Subarnarekha drops over it at Hundru Falls. Mining for coal and iron is common in our state, just as the chapter says plateaus are storehouses of minerals.”

Q2.

Let us go back to our initial trip from Chhota Nagpur to Prayagraj and Almora. Describe the three landforms you came across on the way.

Answer

The journey crosses all three landforms in turn — a plateau, then a plain, then mountains.

The height profile of the journey. The land steps down from the plateau to the plain, then climbs steeply into the Himalayas.

Place	Landform	What you would see
Chhota Nagpur, Jharkhand	Plateau	High but flat-topped land with rock near the surface and thin reddish soil. Scrub and sal forest, boulders in the fields. This plateau holds huge reserves of iron, coal and manganese, so mines and quarries are common. Rivers such as the Subarnarekha tumble over its edge in waterfalls — Hundru Falls is one.
Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh	Plain	Completely flat land, only about a hundred metres above sea level, with deep fertile soil laid down by rivers as sediments. Fields of rice, wheat and pulses stretch to the horizon; villages and towns are close together because the plain is densely populated. The Ganga and the Yamuna meet here — a famous confluence.
Almora, Uttarakhand	Mountains	The road begins to climb through the foothills and then winds along ridges above deep valleys. Slopes are cut into terraces for farming, pine and deodar forest covers the hillsides, and on a clear day the snow-capped high Himalaya is visible to the north. The air is cool and thin, and settlements are small and scattered.

Why the change is so sharp: the plateau is old, hard rock that has resisted wearing down. The plain in between is not rock at all — it is loose sediment carried there by rivers, which is why it is flat and fertile. The mountains are young rock still being pushed upward. In one road journey you cross three completely different chapters of the Earth's history.

Q3.

List a few famous pilgrimage spots in India along with the landforms in which they are found.

Answer

India's pilgrimage places are spread over every landform. Here is a list you can shorten or add to:

Landform	Pilgrimage spots	Where
Mountains	Kedarnath and Badrinath	Garhwal Himalaya, Uttarakhand (the Char Dham yatra)
Mountains	Amarnath cave; Vaishno Devi	Kashmir Himalaya; the Trikuta hills, Jammu
Mountains	Hemkund Sahib; Tawang Monastery	Uttarakhand; Arunachal Pradesh
Mountains	Sabarimala; Tirupati (Tirumala)	Western Ghats, Kerala; the Seshachalam hills of the Eastern Ghats, Andhra Pradesh
Plateau / hills	Shikharji (Parasnath Hill)	Chhota Nagpur Plateau, Jharkhand — the most sacred Jain site
Plateau / hills	Palitana (Shatrunjaya) and Girnar; Dilwara temples	Hills of Gujarat; Mount Abu in the Aravalli Range, Rajasthan
Plateau	Shirdi; Pandharpur; Ellora and Ajanta caves	Deccan Plateau, Maharashtra
Plains	Varanasi (Kashi); Prayagraj; Haridwar	Ganga plain — Haridwar is exactly where the Ganga leaves the mountains and enters the plain
Plains	Ayodhya; Mathura and Vrindavan; Bodh Gaya and Sarnath	Ganga–Yamuna plain, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar
Plains	Amritsar (Harmandir Sahib); Ajmer Sharif	Punjab plain; the edge of the Aravalli in Rajasthan
Coastal plain	Puri; Rameswaram; Somnath; Velankanni	Odisha coast; Tamil Nadu; Gujarat coast
Desert	Ramdevra; Karni Mata temple, Deshnoke	Thar Desert, Rajasthan

A pattern to notice: a great many pilgrimage sites sit either on a summit or on a river — and often at a place where one landform meets another. Haridwar is where the mountains end and the plain begins; Prayagraj is where two rivers meet; Kedarnath is high above the tree line. Boundaries and beginnings have always felt sacred to people.

Tip: add two or three places from your own state to the list, and write which landform each is in. That is what the question is really asking for.

Q4.

State whether true or false — • The Himalayas are young mountains with rounded tops. • Plateaus usually rise sharply at least on one side. • Mountains and hills belong to the same type of landform. • Mountains, plateaus and rivers in India have the same types of flora and fauna. • Ganga is a tributary to the Yamuna. • Deserts have unique flora and fauna. • Melting snow feeds rivers. • Sediments from rivers deposited in the plains makes the land fertile. • All deserts are hot.

Answer

#	Statement	Answer	Why
1	The Himalayas are young mountains with rounded tops.	False	Young — yes; rounded — no. Young mountains like the Himalayas have tall and sharp peaks. Rounded tops belong to much older, eroded ranges such as the Aravalli.
2	Plateaus usually rise sharply at least on one side.	True	A plateau rises above the surrounding land with a more or less flat top, and “some of its sides are often steep slopes”.
3	Mountains and hills belong to the same type of landform.	True	Both are highlands and belong to the same broad category. A hill is simply lower, with less steep slopes and a rounded top; there is no fixed height at which one becomes the other.
4	Mountains, plateaus and rivers in India have the same types of flora and fauna.	False	Each landform has its own climate and therefore its own life — deodar, moss and lichen with the yak and the snow leopard in the mountains; dry scrub on plateaus; crops, grassland and river fish in the plains.
5	Ganga is a tributary to the Yamuna.	False	It is the other way round. The Yamuna is a tributary of the Ganga, joining it at Prayagraj. A tributary is a river that flows into a larger one.
6	Deserts have unique flora and fauna.	True	The chapter says so directly — deserts are dry expanses with very little precipitation, and “their flora and fauna are also unique”.
7	Melting snow feeds rivers.	True	At lower altitudes the snow melts every summer and “turns into water that feeds rivers”. That is why Himalayan rivers keep flowing even before the monsoon.
8	Sediments from rivers deposited in the plains makes the land fertile.	True	Rivers collect particles of rock, sand and silt in the mountains, carry them to the plains and deposit them, “making the soil very fertile”.
9	All deserts are hot.	False	Some are hot — the Sahara, the Thar. Others are cold — the Gobi in Asia; some experts even describe Antarctica as a desert. What defines a desert is dryness, not heat.

True: 2, 3, 6, 7, 8
False: 1, 4, 5, 9

The trap in statements 1 and 9: both are half right, and a half-right sentence is false. “Young” is correct for the Himalayas, but “rounded tops” is not. “Some deserts are hot” is correct, but “all” is not. Read every word before deciding.

Q5.

Match words in pairs: Mount Everest, rafting, camels, plateau, Ganga plains, waterway, Mount Kilimanjaro, Yamuna — with — Africa, roof of the world, rice fields, desert, river, Ganga, tributary, climbing.

Answer

Column A	Matches with	Why
Mount Everest	climbing	The highest mountain in the world, 8,848 m. Bachendri Pal climbed it in 1984 and Arunima Sinha in 2013.
rafting	river	Rafting is an adventure sport done on fast-flowing rivers, such as the Ganga at Rishikesh.
camels	desert	The camel is the animal best adapted to hot, dry desert life — as in the Thar.
plateau	roof of the world	The Tibetan Plateau, with an average altitude of 4,500 m, is nicknamed the ‘Roof of the World’.
Ganga plains	rice fields	The fertile Ganga plain grows rice, wheat, maize, barley and millets.
waterway	Ganga	Because plains have a gentle slope, river navigation is easy; boats still carry people and goods on the Ganga (Fig. 3.10).
Mount Kilimanjaro	Africa	Kilimanjaro, in eastern Africa, is an isolated mountain that is not part of any range.
Yamuna	tributary	The Yamuna is a tributary of the Ganga — it rises in the Himalayas and joins the Ganga at Prayagraj.

Mount Everest → climbing • rafting → river • camels → desert • plateau → roof of the world
Ganga plains → rice fields • waterway → Ganga • Mount Kilimanjaro → Africa • Yamuna → tributary

How to solve a matching set safely: do the ones you are certain of first — Kilimanjaro–Africa and camels–desert — and strike them off both columns. The doubtful ones then have far fewer options left. Here the only real trap is river and Ganga: ‘rafting’ needs any fast river, while ‘waterway’ needs the particular river the chapter names for boat transport.

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