The Himalaya, the most fascinating and the loftiest mountain chain of the world, a perennial, picturesque and panoramic source of philosophic, religious and geonomic streams and a paramount geographical crossroad of pecularities, has been attracting and inspiring seekers of knowledge, saints, devotees, pilgrims, poets, naturalists, explorers, geologists, geographers, ecologists and others since time immemorial. However, during the last few decades, the region has suffered much from various hazards including accelerated denudation, landslides, frequent seismic disturbances, deforestation and similar geotectonic and biotic activities with the result that a number of new problems have poured in. The attention and emphasis given to the region by scientific researches are comparatively inadequate and scattered. This is also a fact that we can never finish to discover and unravel this vast paradise of Nature extending on international frontiers as the crown of India. The present book presents a comprehensive multidisciplinary and coherent study of all the important aspects of the region–starting from geology and other natural features, going through the human, economic and cultural personality and culmunating in the developmental planning. The volume includes various contributions from specialists in different fields of knowledge–geologist, geographer, ecologist, pedologist, anthropologist, sociologist, tourism-scientist, historian, economist and planner etc. The book has been divided into six parts, viz., (I) The General Perspective, (II)The Nature, (III) The Man, (IV) The Economy and Economic Resources, (V) The Culture, Society and Settlements, and (VI) The Organization, Development and Planning. It is hoped that the book will prove most useful to all those interested in the Himalaya–particularly in its Central part.