UPSC GK Questions 2026

South of the Ganga, between the river and the higher ground inland, lies a stretch of low saucer-like land called tal, of which the Mokama tal is the largest.

The rivers of North Bihar come down from the young Himalaya and spread fresh silt over the plain at every flood, and that silt carries a high proportion of lime.

For agricultural planning Bihar is divided into Zone I, the north-west alluvial plain, Zone II, the north-east alluvial plain, and Zone III, the South Bihar alluvial plain, which is further subdivided into III A and III B. The division follows the two things that actually differ across the state: the…

This branch of the south-west monsoon strikes the Bengal coast, is deflected west by the Himalaya and moves up the Ganga plain, reaching Bihar in the second week of June.

Kishanganj lies in the extreme north-east of the state, in the corner nearest the Darjeeling hills and the moist Bengal duars, and it is the first part of Bihar the monsoon current reaches.

The rain comes to Bihar with the Bay of Bengal branch of the south-west monsoon, which enters from the east and loses moisture as it moves inland.

Bihar lies in the northern plain, where summers are hot, the rain comes in a single spell from the south-west monsoon between mid-June and early October, and winters are cool and dry with occasional cold waves.

The Kosi is called the Sapt Kosi because seven head streams gather in the Nepal Himalaya to make it, and of these the three main ones are the Sun Kosi from the west, the Arun from the north and the Tamur from the east.

The Phalgu, or Falgu, is formed by the union of the Lilajan and the Mohana a little above Gaya and flows past the city with a wide bed that stays sandy and dry for most of the year.

A chaur is a shallow, saucer-shaped basin in the flat North Bihar plain that holds water for much of the year because the land has almost no slope and the rivers have raised their own beds.

The sanctuary was notified in 1991 along a stretch of about sixty kilometres of the Ganga between Sultanganj and Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur district.

In August 2008 the eastern embankment of the Kosi gave way at Kusaha, upstream of the Bhimnagar barrage and inside Nepal.

The Karmanasa rises on the Kaimur plateau, flows north along part of the boundary between Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and meets the Ganga near Chausa in Buxar district, the same place at which the Ganga enters Bihar.

The Kosi project that followed the 1954 agreement between India and Nepal has three parts: a barrage at Bhimnagar on the border, long embankments on both banks of the river downstream, and canals, of which the Eastern Kosi Main Canal is the largest.

Kabartal, also called Kanwar Jheel, lies in Begusarai district and is an ox-bow lake left behind by the Burhi Gandak.

The Son rises at Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh, the same plateau that gives birth to the Narmada, flows north-east through Rohtas and joins the Ganga near Maner, a little west of Patna.

The Gandak rises in Nepal, where it is called the Narayani or the Sapt Gandaki, enters Bihar at Valmikinagar in West Champaran and flows south-east to meet the Ganga at Sonpur, across the river from Patna.

The Ganga comes into Bihar from Uttar Pradesh near Chausa, flows from west to east for about 445 kilometres and leaves the state for West Bengal near Rajmahal, splitting Bihar into the North Bihar plain and the South Bihar plain on the way.

The Kosi earns the name because it brings an exceptionally heavy load of silt down from Nepal, drops it the moment it reaches the flat North Bihar plain, raises its own bed above the surrounding land and then breaks out into a new channel.

Placed in a cavern under about 1,300 metres of rock at Pottipuram in the Bodi West Hills, it is designed to catch atmospheric neutrinos and measure how they change from one flavour to another, the phenomenon of neutrino oscillation; the magnetic field lets it tell a neutrino from an antineutrino.