ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Paleogeography of the India–Asia collision system

Imagine that the Earth is like a giant puzzle, with all the continents fitting together like pieces. Many, many years ago, India was its own separate puzzle piece, far away from the other pieces that now make up Asia.

Now, imagine you have two puzzle pieces in your hands and you're trying to push them together. At first, they might not fit very well. But as you keep pushing, they start to crumple and fold in on themselves. This is kind of like what happened when India started moving towards Asia.

As India moved towards Asia, it pushed against the other puzzle pieces that were already there. This caused a lot of folding and crumpling of the land. It's kind of like if you push a piece of paper against a wall - it will wrinkle and fold in on itself.

All this moving and pushing and folding and crumpling caused the land to change a lot over millions of years. The mountains we now see in places like the Himalayas are a result of this process. They were formed by the collision of India into Asia.

So basically, a long, long time ago, India was far away from Asia. But then it started moving towards Asia and pushing against the land that was already there. This caused the land to wrinkle and fold, which created the mountains we have now.