The river runs mainly through rainforest with few roads, and its banks shift seasonally, so ferries are used instead.
Wacky Facts
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Vatican City is the smallest country in the world.
It covers about 0.44 square kilometres and has only a few hundred citizens.
Greenland is mostly covered by ice.
About 80% of the world’s largest island lies under an ice sheet up to 3 km thick.
Istanbul sits on two continents.
The Bosphorus strait divides the city between Europe and Asia.
Lake Baikal holds about a fifth of the world’s unfrozen fresh surface water.
It is also the deepest lake, over 1,600 m.
Sahara sand once was a green savannah.
During the African Humid Period, roughly 14,500 to 5,000 years ago, the Sahara had lakes, grasslands and hippos.
Australia is wider than the Moon.
Australia is about 4,000 km from east to west; the Moon’s diameter is about 3,475 km.
Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.
Canada is estimated to hold more than half of the world’s natural lakes.
The Nile and the Amazon compete for “longest river”.
Measurements differ by where the source is taken; both are around 6,400–6,650 km.
Russia spans 11 time zones.
When it is morning in Kaliningrad in the west, it is already evening in Kamchatka in the far east.
India uses a single time zone despite its width.
Indian Standard Time (UTC+5:30) is used across the country, so the sun rises nearly two hours earlier in the northeast than in the far west.
The Thar Desert is one of the most populated deserts.
It spans Rajasthan and parts of Pakistan and has a far higher population density than most deserts.
The Dead Sea is so salty you float effortlessly.
Its water is about ten times saltier than the ocean, and its shore is one of the lowest points on land, over 400 m below sea level.
Mawsynram in Meghalaya is one of the wettest places on Earth.
It receives an average of roughly 11,000–12,000 mm of rain a year, much of it during the monsoon.
The Ganges is considered one of the most sacred rivers.
It flows about 2,500 km from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal and supports hundreds of millions of people.
The Sundarbans is the largest mangrove forest in the world.
Shared by India and Bangladesh at the mouth of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna, it is home to the Bengal tiger.
Lakshadweep is India’s smallest union territory.
Its 36 islands cover about 32 km² in total.
India has the second-largest road network in the world.
It has more than 6 million km of roads.
Kerala’s Kuttanad farms below sea level.
Farmers grow rice up to about 2 m below sea level, one of few places in the world to do so.
The Sahara is not the largest desert.
Antarctica and the Arctic are larger deserts by definition based on rainfall; the Sahara is the largest hot desert.
Rajasthan is almost as big as Germany.
Rajasthan covers about 342,000 km², while Germany is about 357,000 km² — close, but Rajasthan is actually slightly smaller. It is still larger than Italy or the UK.
Africa is in all four hemispheres.
The equator and the prime meridian both cross Africa, so parts of it lie in the northern, southern, eastern and western hemispheres.
The Pacific Ocean is larger than all land on Earth combined.
It covers about 165 million square kilometres, more than the total land area of all continents.
There is a town in Norway where the sun doesn’t set for months.
Above the Arctic Circle, places like Tromsø see the “midnight sun” in summer and polar night in winter.
Nepal has eight of the world’s ten highest mountains.
Including Everest, Kangchenjunga (on the India border) and Lhotse.
Majuli in Assam is one of the largest river islands in the world.
Majuli sits in the Brahmaputra river. Erosion has shrunk it considerably over the last century.
Antarctica has no permanent residents.
Only scientists and support staff live there temporarily; India runs the Maitri and Bharati research stations.