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50 free Indian Geography trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
India is a subcontinent folded into one country: the youngest mountains on Earth along the top, some of the oldest along the west, a volcanic plateau in the middle and two long coastlines that meet at a point closer to Sumatra than to Chennai. Most quizzes stop at the tallest peak and the longest river. This one starts where they stop. The fifty questions cover the passes and tunnels that keep the Himalaya open, the plateaus and rift valleys that shape the peninsula, the lakes, lagoons and river islands, the winds and storms behind the monsoon calendar, and the map facts that trip people up: which city is really a state capital, which state is wrapped on three sides by a neighbour, and why the whole country runs on a single clock. It suits anyone revising for a school or competitive exam, a pub-quiz setter who wants questions with a reasoning path, or a traveller who has looked at a map of India and wondered what all the gaps are. Every answer carries a source and a one-line explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Maharashtra lake fills a crater blasted into volcanic basalt by a meteorite around 570,000 years ago?
Lonar
Lonar Lake sits in a crater punched by a two-million-tonne meteorite, one of very few impact craters on Earth formed in basalt. Its water is both saline and alkaline.
Q 02Which city became Assam's capital in 1973 after Shillong went to the newly created state of Meghalaya?
Dispur
Dispur was a small village when it was made the capital, and has since been swallowed into Greater Guwahati, which is why most people name the bigger city. Shillong had been Assam's capital since British times.
Q 03Which planned city, laid out by Le Corbusier, is a union territory that serves as the capital of two states?
Chandigarh
Chandigarh is the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana, an arrangement dating from Haryana's creation in 1966. Le Corbusier's master plan built on earlier work by Albert Mayer and Maciej Nowicki.
Q 04Which 20 km-wide strip between Nepal and Bangladesh is the only land link to India's eight northeastern states?
Siliguri Corridor
The Siliguri Corridor is nicknamed the Chicken's Neck, and Bhutan and China's Chumbi Valley also press close to it. Every road and railway to the northeast squeezes through this gap.
Q 05Which line of latitude crosses India through eight states, from Gujarat in the west to the Myanmar border in the east?
Tropic of Cancer
The Tropic of Cancer splits India almost in half, yet the whole country is conventionally treated as tropical. Its 23.5° N path runs just north of Ahmedabad, Bhopal and Ranchi.
Q 06Which Assam river island, among the largest on Earth, became India's first island district in 2016?
Majuli
Majuli is listed by Guinness as the world's largest river island, and it is the seat of Assam's neo-Vaishnavite monasteries, the sattras. Erosion has been eating it away for decades.
Q 07Which Manipur lake, dotted with floating phumdi islands, holds the world's only floating national park?
Loktak
Loktak Lake carries Keibul Lamjao National Park on its phumdis, the last refuge of the sangai, Manipur's brow-antlered deer. It is the largest freshwater lake in the northeast.
Q 08Around which date does the southwest monsoon normally make its first mainland landfall, on Kerala's coast?
1 June
The 1 June burst over Kerala is the date India's weather year turns on, and the rains then take until early July to cover the whole country. Its arrival is tracked like a national event.
Q 09Which forest in Gujarat's Saurashtra peninsula is the only place on Earth where Asiatic lions still live in the wild?
Gir
Gir held 674 lions at the 2020 count, up from 411 in 2010, all descended from a population once down to a few dozen. The whole species depends on this one patch of dry forest.
Q 10Which state, carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, shared Hyderabad as its capital with its parent for a decade?
Telangana
Telangana arrived as India's 29th state, and the count fell back to 28 only when Jammu and Kashmir was reorganised into union territories in 2019. Andhra Pradesh moved its own capital to Amaravati.
Q 11Which 7,817 m peak in Uttarakhand is the highest mountain that lies entirely within India's borders?
Nanda Devi
Nanda Devi is India's second-highest summit but the highest wholly inside the country, since Kangchenjunga straddles the Nepal border. Its sanctuary has been closed to climbers since 1983.
Q 12Which plateau, bounded by the Western and Eastern Ghats, sits on flood basalts erupted around 66 million years ago?
Deccan
The Deccan Plateau rests on the Deccan Traps, lava layers more than 2 km thick laid down at the end of the Cretaceous, around the time the dinosaurs died out. It covers about 422,000 km².
Q 13Which range, running 1,600 km along India's west coast, had 39 of its sites inscribed by UNESCO in 2012?
Western Ghats
Q 21Which 9 km road tunnel beneath Rohtang Pass, opened in 2020, keeps Manali linked to Lahaul through the winter snows?
Atal
The Atal Tunnel is the world's longest single-tube highway tunnel above 10,000 feet, and it cuts the Manali–Keylong run by some 46 km. Before it, Lahaul was cut off for months each year.
Q 22Which 4,310 m pass on the old Silk Road above Gangtok reopened to India–China border trade in 2006, after 44 years shut?
Nathu La
Nathu La was sealed after the 1962 war and reopened on 6 July 2006, though trade is limited to a short list of goods and a summer season. Its name means 'listening ears' in Tibetan.
Q 23Which 32 km break in the mountain wall behind Kerala lets monsoon winds blow east into Coimbatore's plains?
Palakkad Gap
The Western Ghats hold nearly 30% of all species found in India, most of them found nowhere else, and they wring the rain out of the monsoon before it crosses the peninsula. The UNESCO listing covers seven clusters.
Q 14Which river, India's longest west-flowing, runs through a rift valley to the Gulf of Khambhat near Bharuch?
Narmada
The Narmada rises at Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh and flows 1,312 km along a trough that Hindu tradition treats as the line between north and south India. Most big Indian rivers drain east instead.
Q 15Which river, rising at Trimbakeshwar near Nashik and called the Dakshina Ganga, is India's second-longest?
Godavari
The Godavari runs 1,465 km east to the Bay of Bengal and drains about a tenth of India's land area. Its Pushkaram bathing festival comes round once every twelve years.
Q 16Which Gujarat expanse floods knee-deep every monsoon, then dries to a white salt crust grazed by the Indian wild ass?
Rann of Kutch
The Rann of Kutch covers about 26,000 km² and its Little Rann has sheltered the Indian wild ass in a sanctuary since 1973. The three-month Rann Utsav is staged on the salt each winter.
Q 17Which union territory of 36 coral islands in the Arabian Sea, with just 32 km² of land, is run from Kavaratti?
Lakshadweep
Lakshadweep means 'one hundred thousand islands' in Sanskrit and Malayalam, a grand name for a territory whose ten inhabited islands hold about 64,000 people. It is the northern tip of the Chagos–Laccadive ridge.
Q 18Which spot on Great Nicobar, India's southernmost land, lies only 189 km from the Indonesian island of Sumatra?
Indira Point
Indira Point sits far closer to Indonesia than to the Indian mainland, at latitude 6°45′ N, a shade nearer the equator than Sri Lanka's Colombo. The Nicobar group is closed to most visitors.
Q 19Which Assam park on the Brahmaputra, largely under water each monsoon, holds the world's most one-horned rhinos?
Kaziranga
Kaziranga counts around 2,400 greater one-horned rhinos, and its animals flee to higher ground every July and August when three-quarters of the western park goes under water. It was UNESCO-listed in 1985.
Q 20Which Uttarakhand reserve, opened in 1936 under the name Hailey National Park, was India's first national park?
Jim Corbett
Jim Corbett National Park is named after the hunter-turned-conservationist who shot the man-eaters of Kumaon, and it was later chosen as the launch site of Project Tiger. Today it lists 580 bird species.
The Palakkad Gap is the one real breach in the ghats' wall, so it also funnels hot winds west into Kerala and steers Bay of Bengal cyclones inland. Wind farms line it for a reason.
Q 24Which plateau covering most of Jharkhand holds Jamshedpur's steelworks and the Jharia and Bokaro coalfields?
Chota Nagpur
The Chota Nagpur Plateau is India's storehouse of mica, bauxite, copper, iron ore and coal, and its Damodar valley is the country's prime source of coking coal. It spills into four neighbouring states.
Q 25Which lake 80 km from Jaipur, India's largest inland saline body, draws tens of thousands of flamingos each winter?
Sambhar
Sambhar yields about 196,000 tonnes of salt a year, and its shallow brine is a major wintering ground for migratory birds. Legend credits the goddess Shakambhari with turning a forest into the salt pan.
Q 26Which Andhra Pradesh lagoon is walled off from the Bay of Bengal by Sriharikota, the island ISRO launches from?
Pulicat Lake
Pulicat Lake is India's second-largest brackish lagoon at 759 km², and its barrier island carries the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, so rockets lift off over a bird sanctuary. The lake straddles two states.
Q 27Which volcano in the Andaman Sea, the subcontinent's only confirmed active one, erupted again in 2025?
Barren Island
Barren Island is uninhabited, as its name suggests, and has erupted repeatedly since 1991 after more than 150 years of quiet. Nearby Narcondam is a volcano too, but a dormant one.
Q 28Which 150 km-wide strait, named for its line of latitude, separates the Andaman Islands from the Nicobar Islands?
Ten Degree Channel
The Ten Degree Channel runs along 10° N, and it marks the cultural break between the Andamanese peoples to its north and the Nicobarese to its south. Ships bound for Malacca cross it.
Q 29Which Ganges distributary, the river Kolkata stands on, is fed by the Farakka Barrage to flush silt from the port?
Hooghly
The Hooghly gets 1,800 cubic metres of Ganges water a second through Farakka, a diversion that has soured India–Bangladesh relations since the barrage opened in 1975. Dredging was never fully replaced.
Q 30Which salty river, rising near Ajmer and crossing the Thar, peters out in Gujarat's marshes without reaching the sea?
Luni
The Luni is the Thar's largest river, 495 km long, and its Sanskrit name Lavanavari means 'salt river', though it only turns saline after Balotra. Its water is absorbed before it reaches the Arabian Sea.