The Eastern Ghats

1.1 Why don’t the Eastern Ghats form one continuous wall?

The Eastern Ghats run along India’s east coast, from West Bengal through Odisha and Andhra Pradesh to Tamil Nadu. Unlike the continuous Western Ghats, they’re discontinuous: erosion has broken them into separate hill clusters rather than one unbroken ridge.

Four major peninsular rivers are responsible: the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri. Between the Godavari and Krishna alone, the hills nearly disappear into plateaus and Gondwana basins.

1.2 What is the range’s actual highest point?

The Eastern Ghats’ highest peak is Jindhagada, also called Sitamma Konda or Arma Konda, standing at 1,690 metres in Andhra Pradesh’s Araku Valley. Other Araku Valley peaks, Arma Konda, Gali Konda, and Sinkram Gutta, all top 1,600 metres too, clustered in the same corner of the state.

2.1 How do the Eastern Ghats compare to the Western Ghats?

The Eastern Ghats are older than the Western Ghats, and far more eroded. Wind and water have worn them down over a much longer stretch of time. Their average elevation runs to about 520 metres, well below the Western Ghats’ 900 to 1,600 metres.

3.1 Where does Eastern Ghats coffee grow, and how is it different?

Araku Valley, in Andhra Pradesh, and Koraput, in Odisha, are the Eastern Ghats’ two established coffee-growing regions. That coffee grows under forest canopy, at roughly 900 to 1,370 metres, farmed mostly by tribal cooperatives rather than private estates.

Lower rainfall and different soil geology give Eastern Ghats coffee a distinct, often cleaner flavour than Western Ghats coffee grown just a few hundred kilometres away.

4.1 Why does mining keep causing conflict here?

The Eastern Ghats’ Odisha stretch sits on some of India’s richest bauxite deposits, the raw material aluminium is made from. These same hills are also home to Kondh and other Adivasi communities, who depend on the forest for water, food, and their own sacred sites.

5.1 Why do some questions call Mahendragiri the highest peak?

Some older exam questions still call Mahendragiri the Eastern Ghats’ highest peak. It genuinely isn’t, and this mismatch has already shown up in a real exam question. Jindhagada, also called Arma Konda, is the actual highest point at 1,690 metres. Mahendragiri, in Odisha, is a real and important peak, but sits lower at about 1,501 metres.

6.1 How does this range shape peninsular India’s weather and farmland?

The Eastern Ghats receive less rainfall than the Western Ghats, and sit on different underlying geology entirely. The contrast between the two ranges, one continuous and monsoon-blocking, the other broken and drier, shapes much of peninsular India’s climate and agriculture.

The very rivers that break this range apart, the Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri, also carry Western Ghats rainfall east, feeding some of India’s richest delta farmland on their way to the Bay of Bengal.

7.1 What’s happening at Sijimali right now?

Sijimali, a bauxite-rich hill spanning 1,548 hectares across Odisha’s Rayagada and Kalahandi districts, has become the Eastern Ghats’ newest flashpoint. On 5 May 2026, the government granted the final Stage-2 forest diversion clearance for the project, after clashes broke out in April 2026 when police moved to build an approach road, injuring over 60 people.

Local Kondh and Dalit communities allege the original 2023 village-council approvals were fraudulent, including signatures from people who had already died. This is the same mineral-versus-community tension this article’s own bauxite section covers, playing out in real time on the ground right now.