Qualla: Eastern Ghats

Eastern Ghats: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Munna Aawara, CC BY-SA 4.0. The word ghat itself is a clue. In Tamil, kattu means a mountain ridge. In Kannada, gatta means a mountain, gatte a shore. In Telugu, gattu means embankment. Linguist Thomas Burrow traced the word through these Dravidian languages, and the etymology reveals something important about the Eastern Ghats: they are not one thing. They are a broken chain, a discontinuous series of ridges and plateaus that runs along India's eastern coast from the Mahanadi River in Odisha to the Vaigai River in Tamil Nadu, crossing five states and defying the neat categorization that their more famous western counterpart enjoys.

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Image: Munna Aawara | CC BY-SA 4.0

Eastern Ghats: Born Before the Continents Had Names

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shyamal, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Eastern Ghats are ancient in a way that makes most mountain ranges seem like new construction. Geologic evidence dates their formation to the Archaean era, when crustal rocks collided to build an orogenic belt that would eventually become part of the Indian subcontinent. Thes...

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Image: Shyamal | CC BY-SA 4.0

Eastern Ghats: The Broken Spine

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Drashokk, CC BY-SA 4.0. Unlike the Western Ghats, which form a near-continuous wall along India's western coast, the Eastern Ghats are fragmented. The range divides roughly into three sections. The northern section rises in Odisha, stretching from the Similipal hills southward to the Andhra Pradesh bord...

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Image: Drashokk | CC BY-SA 4.0

Eastern Ghats: Rivers That Cut Through Stone

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arjunullas, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Eastern Ghats form one of India's major watersheds, but they do so in a way that seems almost passive. Because the Deccan Plateau tilts eastward, most of peninsular India's great rivers, the Godavari, the Krishna, the Mahanadi, the Kaveri, originate in the Western Ghats and f...

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Image: Arjunullas | CC BY-SA 4.0

Eastern Ghats: Nine Forests, One Range

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yalla.vamsi, Public domain. The discontinuous geography creates remarkable biological diversity. Nine distinct forest types occur within the Eastern Ghats, from tropical evergreen to dry deciduous to thorn scrub. Endemic plant species cluster in isolated pockets where the fragmented mountain chain has creat...

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Image: Yalla.vamsi | Public domain

Eastern Ghats: The Tirumala Unconformity

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sumanth, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the Tirumala Hills, where millions of pilgrims ascend each year to the Venkateswara Temple at Tirupati, the road cuts through a geological feature of global significance. The Eparchaean Unconformity is a major stratigraphic discontinuity representing an extensive period of ero...

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Image: Sumanth | CC BY-SA 3.0