What is Asia like?

Asia covers about 44 million square kilometres, roughly a third of the planet's land. About six in every ten people in the world live there. It is so large that it has nearly every kind of landscape: frozen Siberia in the north, deserts such as the Gobi and the Arabian Desert, tropical rainforests and islands in the south-east, and the world's highest mountains in the middle.

The Himalayas hold Mount Everest, at 8,849 metres the highest point on Earth above sea level. You can read about it in Mount Everest. Great rivers such as the Yangtze, Ganges, Mekong and Indus start in the mountains and feed farms and cities. Lake Baikal in Russia is the deepest lake in the world. The Dead Sea, between Jordan and Israel, has the lowest dry land on Earth.

Asia has about 48 countries. China and India are the most populous and have more than a billion people each. Russia is the largest country in the world, and it stretches across both Asia and Europe. Other well-known countries include Japan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and South Korea. Capital cities include Beijing, New Delhi, Tokyo and Jakarta.

Asia is where some of the earliest civilisations began, and it is the birthplace of many foods and inventions, including rice farming, paper and tea. Several major religions started here too. Europe and Asia are joined as one huge landmass, and the Ural Mountains are usually used as the dividing line between them. Compare it with Europe.