UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The Gangetic Plain zone covers the upper and lower Ganga plains including the Terai belt along the foot of the Himalaya, and Dudhwa in Uttar Pradesh protects its swamp deer or barasingha along with tiger and, after reintroduction, rhinoceros.

The North-East India zone has two parts, the Brahmaputra valley and the north-eastern hills, and Kaziranga lies in the valley part, where annual flooding maintains tall wet grasslands that support the one-horned rhinoceros, wild buffalo, swamp deer and hog deer.

Gir in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat falls in the Gujarat-Rajwara province of the Semi-Arid zone, a belt of thorn and dry deciduous forest between the desert and the Deccan, which also holds Ranthambore, Sariska and the blackbuck grasslands of Velavadar.

The Islands zone, made up of the Andaman and Nicobar group and Lakshadweep, accounts for only about 0.03 per cent of the area of India, the smallest share of any zone, yet it holds coral reefs and species found nowhere else, such as the Narcondam hornbill and the Nicobar megapode…

The Indian Desert zone has two parts, the sandy Thar of Rajasthan and the salt wastes of Kachchh in Gujarat, and the Indian wild ass or khur survives only in the Little Rann of Kachchh, protected in the Wild Ass Sanctuary.

Dachigam National Park near Srinagar, in the Himalaya biogeographic zone, is the last stronghold of the hangul, the Kashmir stag, which is the only surviving race of the red deer group in the Indian subcontinent and the state animal of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Western Ghats zone includes the hill chain and the Malabar coastal plain, and its wet evergreen forests and high shola grassland mosaic hold a very high share of endemic species, among them the lion-tailed macaque of the rainforest canopy and the Nilgiri tahr of the Eravikulam grasslands.

The sundari is a mangrove tree of the tidal deltaic forests of the Coasts biogeographic zone, and the Sundarbans of the Ganga-Brahmaputra delta take their name from it; its wood is hard and durable, and like other mangroves it has salt tolerant roots and breathing roots in the waterlogged mud.

The Trans-Himalaya is the belt lying beyond the Great Himalaya in Ladakh, Lahaul-Spiti and northern Sikkim; it is a cold desert because it stands in the rain shadow of the high ranges, and it is the one Indian zone whose fauna, such as the kiang, wild yak and black-necked crane…

Nokrek lies in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya and represents the North-East India biogeographic zone in the network of biosphere reserves; it is known for the wild citrus relative called the Indian wild orange and for the hoolock gibbon.

The Deccan Peninsula zone covers about forty-two per cent of the country, roughly two-fifths, stretching over the central highlands, Chota Nagpur, the eastern highlands and the Deccan plateau, and it carries most of India sal and teak forests and tiger reserves.

W. A. Rodgers and H. S. Panwar of the Wildlife Institute of India proposed the ten-zone biogeographic classification in 1988 while planning a representative wildlife protected area network for the country, and the ten zones with their biotic provinces are still the official framework.

Bundi, in the Hadoti region, has dozens of baoris and is therefore called the city of stepwells; the grandest is Rani ji ki Baori, built in 1699 by Rani Nathavati, with a high arched gate and carved elephant brackets.

In south Bihar the pyne is a diversion channel that takes flood water from a river, and the ahar is a catchment basin with embankments on three sides in which that water is stored for the rice crop, a system suited to the region hard soil and uneven rainfall.

A tanka is a covered underground cistern, usually circular, dug in the courtyard of a house or in a public square in western Rajasthan, into which rain from the roof or a paved catchment is led and stored for drinking through the dry months.

Both lie in the Mehrauli area of Delhi; Gandhak ki Baoli, from the time of Iltutmish, takes its name from the sulphurous smell of its water, and Rajon ki Baoli belongs to the Lodi period and is named after the masons who once used it.

Adalaj ni Vav stands at Adalaj in Gandhinagar district and was completed in 1499 during the reign of Mahmud Begada; its carving mixes Hindu motifs with Islamic geometric and floral work, and the queen Rudabai is remembered in its story.

The Kallanai, known in English as the Grand Anicut, is a dam of unhewn stone laid across the Kaveri in the Thanjavur region and is credited to the early Chola king Karikala; it still spreads the river water over the delta.

Dholavira, on Khadir island in the Rann of Kutch, had no perennial river, so its builders dammed the Manhar and Mansar streams and cut a series of large reservoirs inside the walled town, the most advanced water engineering known from the Harappan civilisation.

In Karnataka and the Deccan the stepped tank built beside a temple for ritual bathing is called a kalyani or a pushkarni, and the stepped tank at Hampi, built of fitted stone blocks, is the best known example.