| Arakan Mountains (ရခိုင်ရိုးမ (Arakan Yoma)) | |
| Rakhine Mountains | |
| Range | |
| Country | Burma |
|---|---|
| State | Rakhine State |
| Highest point | Mount Victoria |
| - elevation | 3,094 m (10,151 ft) |
| - coordinates | |
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Topography of Myanmar
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The Arakan Mountains (Arakan Range, Rakhine Range, Rakhine Yoma , Arakan Yoma, Rakhine Roma, Arakan Roma; Burmese: ရခိုင်ရိုးမ) is a mountain range in western Burma (Myanmar), between the coast of Rakhine State and the Central Burma Basin, in which flows the Irrawaddy River. It is the most prominent of a series of parallel ridges that arc through Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Burma. The Arakan Mountains run from Cape Negrais in the south into the Manipur State of India in the north. They include the Naga Hills, the Chin Hills, and the Patkai range which includes the Lushai Hills.[1] These mountains are submerged in Bay of Bengal for sufficiently long stretch and emerges again in the form of Andaman and Nicobar Islands
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The Arakan Mountains and the parallel arcs to the west and east were formed by compression as the Indian Plate collided with the Eurasian Plate approximately along the boundary between India and Nepal.[2][3]
The Arakan Mountain Range is over 600 miles (950 km) long,[1] with about 250 miles (400 km) of actual mountains. The highest point in the range is Mount Victoria at 3,094 meters (10,150 feet).
The Arakan Mountains are crossed by the An route to Ngape and Minbu and by an all-weather road from Taungup to Pyay on the Irrawaddy.
Because the Arakan Mountains divide the Rakhine coast from the rest of Burma, they have acted as a barrier between the peoples of central Burma and those of the Indian subcontinent. This played a role in fostering the separate development of the Rakhine people, both linguistically and culturally, from the Burmese. the Arakan Mountains also served as a barrier inhibiting Burmese invasions, and allowing Arakan to develop as an separate political entity. Thus the coastal cities, such as Mrauk U and Waithali, formed the core of Arakan civilization.
There were fierce battles in these mountains between January 1943 and March 1944 during the Japanese conquest of Burma. The Japanese 33d and 55th Divisions faced the British military on the coastal side of the range.
The Arakan Mountains act as a barrier to the southwestern monsoon rains coming from central Myanmar, making their western slopes drier.[1] They include the Chin Hills-Arakan Yoma montane forests ecoregion which is home to an elephant population and also the critically endangered Arakan Forest Turtle which was considered extinct.[4]