The mountain range running along India’s western coast and recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site is the Western Ghats.
Also called the Sahyadri, the Western Ghats form a long, nearly continuous escarpment parallel to the Arabian Sea. They extend for roughly 1,600 kilometres across six Indian states: Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. The range marks the western edge of the Deccan Plateau and meets the Eastern Ghats in the Nilgiri Hills.
The mountains strongly influence India’s climate. They intercept moisture-laden monsoon winds from the Arabian Sea, producing heavy rainfall on their western slopes while creating a drier rain-shadow region inland. Their forests, rivers, wetlands, and isolated highland habitats support exceptional biodiversity, including many species found nowhere else.
UNESCO inscribed 39 component sites across seven clusters in 2012, recognizing the region’s ecological importance. The Western Ghats are not the Himalayas, which lie much farther north, and they should not be confused with the Eastern Ghats, a more discontinuous range along India’s eastern side. Anamudi, in Kerala, is the range’s highest peak.