“China is part of the Asian continent; Pakistan, part of the Asian subcontinent, which also includes India, Bangladesh, and part of Nepal. They are, literally, worlds — and at one time, an entire ocean — apart. The triangular continental plate we know as the subcontinent was once part of Antarctica. Some 70 million years ago it had reached what was the southern coast of Asia and began to slide beneath it, pushing it upward. This southern shore, once at sea level, took the full force of the collision and is now the Karakorams, the Black Gravel Range, home to many of the world’s highest peaks. The shavings, curling up eastward from the collision, became the Himalayas. The collision never really ended. It is still happening, millimeter by millimeter, every second of every hour. Earthquakes are daily occurrences. Glaciers move the distance of more than six football fields in a twenty-four-hour period and have to be bombed by the Pakistani air force when they threaten roads and villages. The Karakorams — geologically perhaps the earth’s most violent transition zone — are a lesson in the impermanence of everything and how the only really accurate map is one in constant motion.”
–Robert Kaplan, The Ends of the Earth
