The Himalayas in the north are lower than in Sikkim and Nepal and have fewer snowy giants

The natural landscape of Assam is a naturally wooden tract rendered into a grassland by man’s activities. This is being illustrated in the wildlife sanctuary of Kaziranga. If the grass is not burnt every year, the forest will take over and rob thousands of tourists of opportunities to see the one-horned rhino, the wild buffalo and the swamp deer. Except for four months in the winter it rains throughout the year and it rains heavily, thus providing the optimum condition for forest growth.

Outside the sanctuary the forest is fought back by ploughing. The Brahmaputra Valley is thus a man made grassland. It is narrow (rarely 80 miles wide)and long (extending over 500 miles). Heavy rain swells its rivers, and Assam is a state of big rivers, mostly unbridged and unfordable but provided with ferries. The estimated water power resources of the Brahmaputra Valley are the third biggest in the world, coming after the Congo and Amazon basins and, if extra heavy voltage long -distance power transmission is developed, there is enough potential electricity in Assam to become the mainstay of entire India’s industrial economy.

The Himalayas in the north are lower than in Sikkim and Nepal and have fewer snowy giants. The highest peaks, Namcha Barwa, Gyalperi and Chomolhari, are between 23,000 and 25,000 feet above sea level. The giants are not seen but in autumn the 20,000 feet high Gorichen Range in Arunachal is often seen from the valley. Otherwise, the outstanding feature is the Block Mountain in Bhutan, 16,000 feet high but snow -covered in winter.