Anamudi ("Elephant head", ) is a mountain located in

Ernakulam district Ernakulam (; ISO: ''Eṟaṇākuḷaṁ'') is one of the List of districts of Kerala, 14 districts in the States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kerala, and takes its name from the Ernakulam, eponymous city division in Kochi. ...

and

Idukki district Idukki (ഇടുക്കി; ) is one of the 14 districts in the Indian state of Kerala in the southwest of the country. It is the largest district in Kerala and lies amid the Cardamom Hills of Western Ghats in Kerala. Idukki district co ...

of the Indian state of

Kerala Kerala ( , ) is a States and union territories of India, state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile ...

. With an elevation of , it is the highest peak in the Western Ghats and in

South India South India, also known as Southern India or Peninsular India, is the southern part of the Deccan Peninsula in India encompassing the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana as well as the union territories of ...

. With a

topographic prominence In topography, prominence or relative height (also referred to as autonomous height, and shoulder drop in US English, and drop in British English) measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling ...

of , it is the 26th most prominent peak in the world.

Geography

Anamudi has an elevation of . It is the highest peak and one of the three ultra prominent peaks in

. It is the peak with the greatest

topographic isolation The topographic isolation of a summit is the minimum geographical distance, horizontal distance to a point of equal elevation, representing a radius of dominance in which the peak is the highest point. It can be calculated for small hills and is ...

within India and is the highest point south of the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than list of h ...

. It is called the Everest of South India. Anamudi has a topographic prominence of , the associated key saddle being over away at in

Haryana Haryana () is a States and union territories of India, state located in the northern part of India. It was carved out after the linguistic reorganisation of Punjab, India, Punjab on 1 November 1966. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with les ...

state just to the west of

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its Bank (geography ...

. The peak is not exceptionally steep and is a

fault-block mountain Fault blocks are very large blocks of rock, sometimes hundreds of kilometres in extent, created by Tectonics, tectonic and localized stresses in Crust (geology), Earth's crust. Large areas of bedrock are broken up into blocks by Fault (geology) ...

. The north and south slopes are gentle, while the east and west slopes are steeper, with difficult rock faces. It is located in the southern region of Eravikulam National Park at the junction of the

Cardamom Hills The Cardamom Hills or Yela Mala are mountain range of southern India and part of the southern Western Ghats located in Idukki district, Kerala, India. Their name comes from the cardamom spice grown in much of the hills' cool elevation, w ...

, the

Anaimalai Hills The Anamala or Anaimalai, also known as the Elephant Mountains, are a range of mountains in the southern Western Ghats of central Kerala ( Idukki district, Ernakulam district, Palakkad district, Thrissur district) and span the border of wester ...

and the

Palani Hills The Palani Hills are a mountain range in the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The Palani Hills are an eastward extension of the Western Ghats ranges, which run parallel to the west coast of India. The Palani Hills adjoin with t ...

in the Periyar River basin of

at a distance of from

Munnar Munnar () is a town located in the Idukki district of the southwestern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kerala. Munnar is situated at around above mean sea level, in the Western Ghats mountain range. This ancient plantat ...

Geology

Anamudi is located within a larger tectonic province, a

Neoproterozoic The Neoproterozoic Era is the last of the three geologic eras of the Proterozoic geologic eon, eon, spanning from 1 billion to 538.8 million years ago, and is the last era of the Precambrian "supereon". It is preceded by the Mesoproterozoic era an ...

mobile belt known as the Southern Granulite Terrane (SGT) or Pandyan Mobile Belt. This geologic province represents an area of

Archean The Archean ( , also spelled Archaean or Archæan), in older sources sometimes called the Archaeozoic, is the second of the four geologic eons of Earth's history of Earth, history, preceded by the Hadean Eon and followed by the Proterozoic and t ...

rocks that were deeply buried during the neoproterozoic

Pan-African Orogeny The Pan-African orogeny was a series of major Neoproterozoic orogenic events which related to the formation of the supercontinents Gondwana and Pannotia about 600 million years ago. This orogeny is also known as the Pan-Gondwanan or Saldanian Oro ...

, as part of the

Mozambique Belt The Mozambique Belt is a band in the Earth's crust that extends from East Antarctica through East Africa up to the Arabian-Nubian Shield. It formed as a suture between plates during the Pan-African orogeny, when Gondwana was formed. The Mozambi ...

, in which developed Himalayan-scale mountains when West and East

Gondwana Gondwana ( ; ) was a large landmass, sometimes referred to as a supercontinent. The remnants of Gondwana make up around two-thirds of today's continental area, including South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia (continent), Australia, Zea ...

collided due to the closure of the ancient Mozambique Ocean. Specifically, Anamudi is located within a geological sub-province of the SGT known as the Madurai Province. The mountain

massif A massif () is a principal mountain mass, such as a compact portion of a mountain range, containing one or more summits (e.g. France's Massif Central). In mountaineering literature, ''massif'' is frequently used to denote the main mass of an ...

itself is composed of neoproterozoic A-type granite known as Munnar Granite, which was intruded deep into the thickened crust of the SGT during Orogenic collapse of the Pan-African highlands. After approximately 800-500 million years of burial, the Munnar Granite of the Anamundi

is now exposed high above sea level due to a combination of

faulting In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

and unroofing.

Climate

Köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies it as subtropical highland (''Cwb''), bordering on '' Cwc'' and '' ET''. Sholas are found in its valleys, like most meadows of the Western Ghats.

Flora and Fauna

Anamudi and the Eravikulam National Park surrounding it is home to the largest surviving population of the

Nilgiri tahr The Nilgiri tahr (''Nilgiritragus hylocrius'') is an ungulate that is endemic to the Nilgiri Hills and the southern portion of the Western and Eastern Ghats in the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala in southern India. It is the only species in th ...

Asian elephant The Asian elephant (''Elephas maximus''), also known as the Asiatic elephant, is the only living ''Elephas'' species. It is the largest living land animal in Asia and the second largest living Elephantidae, elephantid in the world. It is char ...

gaur The gaur (''Bos gaurus''; ) is a large bovine native to the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia, and has been listed as Vulnerable species, Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 1986. The global population was estimated at a maximum of 21,000 ...

Bengal tiger The Bengal tiger is a population of the ''Panthera tigris tigris'' subspecies and the nominate tiger subspecies. It ranks among the largest wild cats alive today. It is estimated to have been present in the Indian subcontinent since the Late ...

s, and the Nilgiri marten are some of the species of animals found here. The area is also habitat of several amphibians including '' Raorchestes resplendens'', unique to the region. The summit of the Anamudi is vegetated with patches of stunted '' Kuruna densifolia'' and ''

Gaultheria fragrantissima ''Gaultheria fragrantissima'' is a species of flowering plant native to southern and southeastern Asia. It is commonly known as fragrant wintergreen or ''dhasingre''. Description ''Gaultheria fragrantissima'' is a shrub or small tree. The flowe ...

'' (wintergreen), '' Anaphalis'', ''

Impatiens ''Impatiens'' is a genus of more than 1,000 species of flowering plants, widely distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere and the tropics. Together with the genus ''Hydrocera'' (one species), ''Impatiens'' make up the family (biology), f ...

'' and '' Eriocaulon''.

References

External links