The Western Ghats run along India’s western coastline, while the Eastern Ghats stretch along the eastern coast of the Indian peninsula. Together, these two mountain ranges frame the Deccan Plateau like a pair of uneven walls, shaping the country’s rivers, rainfall, and biodiversity. Though they share a name, they differ significantly in structure, elevation, and continuity.
Where the Western Ghats Are Located
The Western Ghats run roughly parallel to India’s west coast, about 30 to 50 km inland from the Arabian Sea. They stretch 1,600 km from the state of Gujarat in the north through Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, and into Tamil Nadu at their southern end. The range is nearly continuous, interrupted only by the Palghat Gap, a break about 32 km wide that sits between the Nilgiri Hills to the north and the Anaimalai Hills to the south, straddling the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border. This gap has historically served as a major route for travel and trade between those two states.
The Western Ghats cover approximately 140,000 square km and reach their highest elevations in the southern sections, where peaks in the Nilgiri and Anaimalai ranges exceed 2,600 meters. Anamudi, at 2,695 meters, is the highest point in the Western Ghats and the tallest peak in India south of the Himalayas.
Where the Eastern Ghats Are Located
The Eastern Ghats run along the eastern side of the peninsula, stretching about 1,750 km from the state of Odisha in the north, through Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and into Tamil Nadu in the south. Unlike their western counterpart, the Eastern Ghats are not a single unbroken chain. They form a discontinuous series of hill ranges, broken apart by the large rivers that flow eastward across the Deccan Plateau and cut through the mountains on their way to the Bay of Bengal.
The average elevation of the Eastern Ghats is around 600 meters, considerably lower than the Western Ghats. Their highest point is Jindhagada Peak at 1,690 meters, located in Andhra Pradesh. The second-highest peak, Deomali (1,672 meters), sits in the Koraput district of Odisha.
How the Two Ranges Compare
The Western Ghats are taller, more continuous, and generally steeper on their seaward side. The Eastern Ghats are lower, more fragmented, and spread across a wider area. This difference in structure has major consequences for India’s geography.
Because the Western Ghats form a nearly unbroken wall facing the Arabian Sea, they intercept the moisture-laden southwest monsoon winds each summer. As these winds hit the mountains, they’re forced upward, cool, and release heavy rainfall on the western (windward) slopes. This orographic uplift is the primary reason India’s west coast and the state of Kerala receive some of the heaviest monsoon rainfall in the country. The eastern side of the Western Ghats, by contrast, falls in a rain shadow and is noticeably drier.
The Eastern Ghats, being lower and broken by river valleys, don’t block moisture in the same way. The east coast receives most of its rain from the northeast monsoon later in the year, between October and December.
Where the Two Ranges Meet
The Western and Eastern Ghats converge in the south at the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu and northern Kerala. This junction creates a high-altitude plateau where the two ranges effectively merge, forming one of the most ecologically rich regions on the subcontinent. South of this meeting point, the combined highlands continue into the Anaimalai and Palani hill ranges before tapering off near the southern tip of India.
Rivers That Connect Them
Most of peninsular India’s major rivers originate in the Western Ghats and flow eastward across the Deccan Plateau, eventually cutting through or passing between the broken segments of the Eastern Ghats before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. The Krishna, for example, rises near Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra at an altitude of 1,336 meters, then flows roughly 1,400 km through Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. The Cauvery originates in the Kodagu district of Karnataka and flows southeast for about 800 km.
These east-flowing rivers are a direct result of the Western Ghats being positioned so close to the west coast. The range creates a tilted plateau that slopes gently eastward, sending nearly all the peninsula’s drainage toward the Bay of Bengal. The rivers also explain why the Eastern Ghats are discontinuous: over millions of years, powerful river systems like the Godavari, Krishna, and Cauvery have carved wide gaps through the eastern hills.
Geological Origins
The two ranges have very different geological histories. The Eastern Ghats are far older, with rocks dating back roughly 1 billion years to a period of mountain-building called the Grenvillian Orogeny. Geological evidence suggests this ancient range was once part of a massive orogenic belt that connected eastern India to parts of East Antarctica, before the supercontinent Gondwana broke apart. The rocks have been through multiple episodes of intense heating and deformation over hundreds of millions of years.
The Western Ghats are geologically younger. Much of the range is built from layers of volcanic basalt, particularly in the northern sections covering Maharashtra, where the Deccan Traps were formed by massive lava flows roughly 66 million years ago. The range took its current shape as the Indian subcontinent rifted away from Madagascar and the western edge of the landmass was uplifted.
Biodiversity and Conservation
The Western Ghats are one of the world’s 36 biodiversity hotspots, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The combination of heavy rainfall, varied elevations, and tropical latitude has produced extraordinary species diversity. The range is home to thousands of plant and animal species found nowhere else, including endemic amphibians, reptiles, and flowering plants. The Palghat Gap plays an interesting ecological role here: because it breaks the mountain chain, species on either side of the gap have evolved separately, leading to distinct populations in the Nilgiris versus the Anaimalais.
The Eastern Ghats, while less celebrated, hold their own ecological significance. Their dry deciduous forests support different plant and animal communities adapted to lower rainfall. Because the range is fragmented, many of the hill sections function as isolated ecological islands, with unique local species assemblages. Conservation in the Eastern Ghats is complicated by the fact that the hills are spread across multiple states with no single unified protected area framework comparable to what exists in the Western Ghats.