Hindu Kush

The Hindu Kush is a mountain range of about 800 kilometers across Central and South Asia, lying west of the Himalayas and crossing Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Its highest peak, Tirich Mir, reaches 7,708 meters in Pakistan's Chitral District, and the range forms the divide between the Amu Darya drainage system to the north and the Indus River valley to the south, approaching the Pamir Mountains near the point where China, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet. Built from metamorphic schist and gneiss with granite intrusions, the range remains tectonically active and prone to earthquakes. Historically it was a major center of Buddhism, home to the Bamiyan Buddhas, and a strategic corridor for invasions of the Indian subcontinent, a role that keeps it geopolitically significant today.