Which of the following is the highest peak of peninsular India?

The correct answer is C, Arabian sea. Lakshadweep is a group of small coral islands, atolls and reefs lying off the Malabar coast of Kerala in the Arabian Sea, built on a submarine ridge. It is the smallest union territory of India by area, and Kavaratti is its administrative headquarters.

Option A, the Bay of Bengal, holds India's other island group, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which are of volcanic and tectonic origin rather than coral, so the two are easy to swap in a hurry. Option B, the Pacific Ocean, lies far to the east of Asia and washes no part of India. Option D, the Atlantic Ocean, lies on the other side of Africa and has no Indian territory in it at all. Remember the simple pair: coral Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea in the west, volcanic Andaman and Nicobar in the Bay of Bengal in the east.

The correct answer is B, Bhabar. Where the rivers leave the hills they drop their coarsest load, and the resulting belt of gravel and pebbles is so porous that the smaller streams sink into it and vanish. This belt, about eight to sixteen kilometres wide, runs along the whole northern edge of the plains and is known as the bhabar.

Option A, the terai, is the belt immediately south of the bhabar, where the same streams come to the surface again, creating a marshy and once heavily forested tract. Option C, bhangar, refers not to a position at the foot of the hills but to the older alluvium of the plains, lying above the flood level and often containing lime nodules called kankar. Option D, khadar, is the newer alluvium of the active floodplains, renewed by fresh silt at every flood. Bhabar and terai are a pair and are the two most often interchanged in answer sheets.

The correct answer is B. Both rivers flow westward along faulted troughs, or rift valleys, that lie between the Vindhya and the Satpura ranges, and both empty into the Arabian Sea through estuaries instead of deltas. Most other large peninsular rivers, such as the Godavari, the Krishna and the Kaveri, flow eastward down the general slope of the Deccan.

Option A is wrong because both are peninsular rivers: the Narmada rises at Amarkantak and the Tapi in the Betul district of Madhya Pradesh, far from the Himalaya. Option C is wrong because a river flowing into the Arabian Sea through a rift cannot build an eastern delta; in fact the swift flow and the narrow trough prevent either river from building a delta at all. Option D is wrong because both are perennial rivers of considerable size, the Narmada being the largest west-flowing river of the peninsula.

The correct answer is A, the Nilgiri and Anaimalai hills. The Palghat Gap is a wide trough about thirty kilometres across, and it is the principal natural break in the otherwise continuous wall of the Western Ghats. The road and rail routes and the Bharathapuzha river between Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and Palakkad in Kerala all use it, and it strongly affects the monsoon winds reaching the interior.

Option B is wrong because the Cardamom and Palani hills lie south of the gap and are continuous with the Anaimalai group. Option C is wrong because the Satpura and Maikal ranges belong to central India, far north of the Western Ghats, near the source of the Narmada. Option D is wrong because the Javadi and Shevaroy hills are outliers of the Eastern Ghats in Tamil Nadu and have nothing to do with this gap. The other named breaks in the Ghats are the Thal Ghat and the Bhor Ghat in Maharashtra.

The correct answer is B, Aravalli. The Aravalli was folded in the Precambrian era, hundreds of millions of years before the Himalaya rose, and long erosion has reduced it to a chain of low residual ridges running north-east from Gujarat through Rajasthan towards Delhi. Its highest point, Guru Shikhar near Mount Abu, is only about 1,722 metres.

Option A, the Satpura, is a block range of the peninsula, younger than the Aravalli and raised between the Narmada and Tapi troughs. Option C, the Shiwalik, is the youngest range in India, made of loose gravel and sediment shed by the rising Himalaya in recent geological time, so it is the opposite of the right answer. Option D, the Vindhya, is a scarp of sedimentary rock north of the Narmada that acts as the traditional divide between north and south India, but it is not a folded range of the Aravalli's antiquity.