NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 1 The physical map of India at the end of the book — Let's Explore

Book page 2 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Look at the map of India at the end of this book. What are you able to observe?

Answer

The first thing you notice is that India is not one kind of land but many. Reading the map from north to south:

A long brown-and-white band across the whole north — the Himalayas, curving from Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh.
Below it a broad green strip running east–west — the flat Northern (Gangetic) Plains, crossed by thick blue river lines: the Indus, Ganga, Yamuna and Brahmaputra.
A yellow patch in the west — the Thar Desert — with the thin ridge of the Aravallis on its eastern side.
A large triangular block in the middle and south, coloured light brown — the Peninsular Plateau, edged by the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats.
Blue on three sides — the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean — and two dotted island groups, Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Tip: trace the coastline with your finger and count how many States touch the sea. You will find nine coastal States and several Union Territories.

Q2.

Recall your lesson on different types of landforms — mountains, plains and plateaus. Which landforms can you identify on the map?

Answer

All three, and more:

Landform	Where you see it on the map
Mountains	The Himalayas in the north; the Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats along the two coasts; the Aravallis in the north-west; the hills of the north-east
Plains	The Northern Plains of the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra; the narrow western coastal plain and the wider eastern coastal plain
Plateaus	The Peninsular Plateau, including the Deccan Plateau, the Chota Nagpur area and the Meghalaya Plateau
Desert	The Thar Desert in Rajasthan and nearby States
Islands	Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea; the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal

Q3.

What do the different colours on the map mean? (Hint: The legend on the map shows the heights of each area.)

Answer

On a physical map the colours are not decoration — each colour stands for a band of height (altitude) above sea level. The legend tells you which colour means which height.

Colour	Roughly what it means	Where in India
Dark green	Lowest land, near sea level	The Northern Plains, the coastal plains, the deltas
Light green / pale yellow	Slightly higher, up to a few hundred metres	Edges of the plains, the Thar
Light brown	Higher ground, hundreds of metres	The Deccan and other plateaus
Dark brown	Mountains, thousands of metres	The Himalayas, the higher Western Ghats
White	The very highest, permanently snow-covered	The Greater Himalayas
Blue	Water — and deeper blue means deeper water	Seas, the ocean, big rivers and lakes

Why it happens: colour is the quickest way to show a third dimension — height — on a flat sheet of paper. One glance tells you the north is high and the middle of the country is a raised, flat block.

Check it yourself: the exact height ranges differ from map to map, so always read the legend printed on the map in your book before deciding what a colour means.

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