Géographie du Pakistan

The Geography of Pakistan (جغرافیۂ پاکِستان) encompasses a wide variety of landscapes varying from plains to deserts, forests, and plateaus ranging from the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean in the south to the mountains of the Karakoram, Hindukush, Himalayas ranges in the north. Pakistan geologically overlaps both with the Indian and the Eurasian tectonic plates where its Sindh and Punjab provinces lie on the north-western corner of the Indian plate while Balochistan and most of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa lie within the Eurasian plate which mainly comprises the Iranian Plateau. Pakistan is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the northwest and Iran to the west while China borders the country in the northeast. The nation is geopolitically situated within some of the most hostile regional boundaries which share disputes and have many times escalated military tensions between the nations i.e., that of Kashmir with India. Its western borders include the Khyber Pass and Bolan Pass that have served as traditional migration routes between Central Eurasia and South Asia. At , Pakistan is the 33rd largest country by area, little more than twice the size of the US state of California, and slightly larger than the Canadian province of Alberta. Pakistan shares its borders with four neighboring countries – People's Republic of China, Afghanistan, India, and Iran while Tajikistan is separated by the thin Wakhan Corridor– adding up to about in length (excluding the coastal areas). The border with Afghanistan which is known as the Durand Line, , which runs from the Hindu Kush and the Pamir Mountains. A narrow strip of Afghanistan territory called the Wakhan Corridor extends between Pakistan and Tajikistan. The eastern tip of the Wakhan Corridor starts the Sino-Pak border between the People's Republic of China and Pakistan spanning about . It carries on south-eastward and ends near the Karakoram Pass. This line was determined from 1961 to 1965 in a series of agreements between China and Pakistan and finally on 2 March 1963 both the governments, of karachi and Beijing, formally agreed.