Indus River

The Indus (IN-dəs) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The 3,180 km (1, 980 mi) river rises in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China where it is known as Sengge Zangbo, flows northwest through the disputed Kashmir region, first through the Indian-administered Ladakh, and then the Pakistani-administered Gilgit-Baltistan, bends sharply to the left after the Nanga Parbat massif, and flows south-by-southwest through several provinces of Pakistan, before bifurcating and emptying into the Arabian Sea, its main stem located near the port city of Karachi. The Indus River has a total drainage area of circa 1,120,000 km2 (430, 000 mi2). Its estimated annual flow is around 175 km3/a (5, 500 m3/s), making it one of the 50 largest rivers in the world in terms of average annual flow. Its left-bank tributary in Ladakh is the Zanskar River, and its left-bank tributary in the plains is the Panjnad River which is formed by the successive confluences of the five Punjab rivers, namely the Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej rivers. Its principal right-bank tributaries are the Shyok, Gilgit, Kabul, Kurram, and Gomal rivers. Beginning in a mountain spring and fed with glaciers and rivers in the Himalayan, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush ranges, the river supports the ecosystems of temperate forests, plains, and arid countryside. Geologically, the headwaters of the Indus and to their east those of the Yarlung Tsangpo (later in its course, the Brahmaputr

Flows through: India, Pakistan, People's Republic of China.

River data from Wikidata (CC0); lengths normalised to a common unit.