South Asia
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50 free South Asia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
South Asia is home to about a quarter of the world's people, in a region bounded by the Himalayas to the north and the Indian Ocean to the south. Its map holds the planet's tallest peaks, some of its mightiest rivers and several of its largest cities, and its modern borders were drawn within living memory. This quiz covers the countries and their capitals, the great cities, and the physical features that shape life there: mountain ranges, rivers, plateaus, passes and coasts. It also follows the region after the Second World War, from the end of British rule and the partition of 1947 to the new states, leaders and disputes that came next. It suits a geography class revising the region, a student preparing for a test on decolonization, or a quiz host who needs a ready-made round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the questions can be printed for use on paper.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which South Asian country flies the only non-rectangular national flag, built from two stacked pennants?
Nepal
Nepal's flag joins two pennants that once flew separately. Until 1962 its sun and crescent moon were drawn with human faces, which were removed to modernise the flag.
Q 02Which Indian Ocean nation is the lowest-lying country on Earth, with a natural high point of only 2.4 metres?
Maldives
The Maldives averages just 1.5 metres above sea level across a double chain of 26 atolls. English borrowed the word atoll itself from Dhivehi, the islanders' language.
Q 03Which river rises in Tibet but reaches the Arabian Sea through Pakistan near the port of Karachi?
Indus
The Indus gave India its name by way of Old Persian and Greek, and its Sanskrit name, Sindhu, simply means river. Its source is a Tibetan spring called the Lion's Mouth.
Q 04Which city was purpose-built in the 1960s to replace Karachi as the capital of Pakistan?
Islamabad
Islamabad was planned by Greek architect Constantinos Doxiadis on a grid below the Margalla Hills. The government sat in nearby Rawalpindi until the new city was ready.
Q 05Which Asian kingdom wrote Gross National Happiness into its 2008 constitution as the goal of government?
Bhutan
Bhutan's fourth king coined the phrase in 1972, calling it more important than gross domestic product. The kingdom lifted its ban on television only in 1999.
Q 06Which mountain, logged by British surveyors as Peak XV, is known locally as Sagarmatha and Chomolungma?
Everest
Mount Everest took its English name in 1865 from Sir George Everest, a surveyor who never saw the peak. He objected that his name could not be written or pronounced in Hindi.
Q 07Which Indian port city, built on what were once seven separate islands, is the home of Bollywood?
Mumbai
Mumbai was a cluster of seven islands until the British began joining them with the Hornby Vellard causeway in 1782. The Greek geographer Ptolemy had called the place Heptanesia.
Q 08Which independence leader walked about 240 miles to the sea at Dandi in 1930 to defy the British salt tax?
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi left Sabarmati Ashram with 78 volunteers and made salt illegally on the shore at Dandi. Newspaper and newsreel coverage of the march drew worldwide attention to India's independence movement.
Q 09Which river, worshipped by Hindus as a goddess, crosses northern India to reach the world's largest delta?
Ganges
The Ganges proper begins at Devprayag, where two Himalayan streams meet, though Hindu tradition takes the shorter Bhagirathi as its source. Bathing in its water is believed to remit sins.
Q 10In which Indian city on the Yamuna River did Shah Jahan build the Taj Mahal as a tomb for his wife?
Agra
Agra's white marble mausoleum employed more than 20,000 workers and artisans. Mumtaz Mahal, the wife it honours, had died giving birth to her 14th child.
Q 11Which arm of the Indian Ocean off India's east coast spawns the cyclones that strike Odisha and Bangladesh?
Bay of Bengal
The Bay of Bengal produced the 1970 Bhola cyclone, which killed at least 300,000 people in what is now Bangladesh. Storms of hurricane strength are called cyclones when they form there.
Q 12Which desert, also called the Great Indian Desert, stretches from Rajasthan across the border into Pakistan?
Thar
The Thar hosted India's first nuclear test, code-named Smiling Buddha, near the town of Pokhran in 1974. It is also one of the most widely populated deserts in the world.
Q 13Which mountain pass on the old Silk Road links Peshawar in Pakistan with the Afghan border?
Khyber
Q 21Which Himalayan capital, standing at about 1,300 metres, lies in a valley with seven UNESCO-listed monument zones?
Kathmandu
Kathmandu takes its name from Kasthamandap, a pavilion named with the Sanskrit words for wood and pavilion. Legend says a bodhisattva drained the lake that once filled the valley with a sword cut.
Q 22Which city on the Buriganga River became a national capital in 1971, when East Pakistan became Bangladesh?
Dhaka
Dhaka was once the hub of the muslin trade and one of the most prosperous cities in the world. From 1947 it had been the administrative capital of East Pakistan.
Q 23Which city, the capital of Afghanistan, stands almost 1,800 metres up in a narrow valley of the Hindu Kush?
Kabul
The Khyber carried invaders into the subcontinent from Darius I of Persia to Babur. Its summit at Landi Kotal lies just 5 km inside Pakistan.
Q 14K2, nicknamed the Savage Mountain, is the highest peak of which range on the Pakistan–China border?
Karakoram
The Karakoram gave K2 its name: surveyor Thomas Montgomerie sketched the range's peaks in 1856 and labelled them K1 and K2. A 1953 climber called it a savage mountain that tries to kill you.
Q 15Which plateau covers most of southern India between the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats?
Deccan
Deccan comes from the Sanskrit word for south. Its north-west is built from lava that poured out about 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous.
Q 16The Himalayas began rising when the Indian plate, drifting north from Madagascar, hit which tectonic plate?
Eurasian
The Eurasian plate met an India that had split from Madagascar and drifted north at about 20 cm a year. Before that, India was part of the supercontinent Gondwana.
Q 17Which mangrove forest, the largest on Earth, covers the tiger-haunted delta shared by India and Bangladesh?
Sundarbans
The Sundarbans probably take their name from the sundari, the mangrove tree that dominates the forest. Four of its protected areas are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Q 18Which river is called the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet and the Jamuna in Bangladesh, with Assam lying in between?
Brahmaputra
The Brahmaputra has a rare male name among the subcontinent's mostly female rivers. Explorers proved it was the same river as the Tsangpo only in 1884–1886.
Q 19Which Indian state, whose name means 'abode of clouds', holds Mawsynram, reputedly the wettest place on Earth?
Meghalaya
Meghalaya's southern Khasi Hills record about 12,000 mm of rain a year, and villagers there grow living bridges from tree roots. British officials nicknamed it the Scotland of the East.
Q 20The summer monsoon usually makes its first landfall on mainland India around 1 June in which coastal state?
Kerala
Kerala gets the first burst of rain, and the winds then take until mid-July to cover the whole country. The same coast's spices drew Portuguese traders in the 15th century.
Kabul was captured in 1504 by Babur, who made it his headquarters, and his tomb still lies in the city's Bagh-e Babur gardens. It is one of the highest capital cities in the world.
Q 24Which capital city, designed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, replaced Calcutta as the seat of British India?
New Delhi
New Delhi had its foundation stone laid by King George V in 1911 and was inaugurated in 1931. Just sixteen years later it became the capital of an independent India.
Q 25Which port city remains Sri Lanka's executive capital although the legislature moved to nearby Kotte?
Colombo
Colombo's name was first recorded by Portuguese explorers in 1505 and may come from Sinhala words for a harbour with leafy mango trees. It is still the country's most populous city.
Q 26Which Pakistani city on the Ravi River is home to the Badshahi Mosque, the Shalimar Gardens and a famous Walled City?
Lahore
Lahore is a UNESCO City of Literature and the centre of Pakistan's book publishing. Its fort and the Shalimar Gardens are both World Heritage Sites.
Q 27Which north Indian city, also called Benares or Kashi, is central to Hindu rites of pilgrimage, death and mourning?
Varanasi
Varanasi is one of the world's oldest continually inhabited cities. Its ancient name, Kashi, was shared with a kingdom of the first millennium BCE.
Q 28Which Indian city, whose name means 'pool of nectar', is home to the Golden Temple, the holiest site in Sikhism?
Amritsar
Amritsar's Golden Temple offers every visitor a free vegetarian meal from its community kitchen, whatever their faith. Its sanctum was overlaid with gold leaf in 1830.
Q 29Which Indian hill town has hosted the 14th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile since 1960?
Dharamshala
Dharamshala took in the Tibetan administration in May 1960, a year after the Dalai Lama fled Tibet and first set it up in Mussoorie. His residence sits about 1,830 metres up.
Q 30Which shallow strait, named after an 18th-century governor of Madras, separates southern India from Sri Lanka?
Palk
The Palk Strait is only a few metres deep near Adam's Bridge, the chain of shoals that almost joins the two countries. Temple records suggest storms broke that land link in 1480.