Origin myths from different regions of the Himalayas seek to explain the formation of the mountains. According to Verrier Elwin’s Myths of the North-East Frontier of India, the Hruso tribe (also known as the Aka) in Arunachal Pradesh believe that the world was created out of two eggs. When these hatched, one produced the sky, which was male, and the other produced the earth, which was female.

When the sky tried to copulate with the earth, he discovered that she was too large for him to take her in his arms, so he asked his terrestrial lover to make herself smaller. As she did, her pliable body was drawn together and folded into hills, mountains and valleys. When the sky made love to the earth, every kind of tree and grass and all living creatures came into being.

Elwin further collected an account of how the earth was first covered in water as recounted by the Nocte tribe of Tirap. Living inside the water was a snake called Pu. Gradually, over time, the all-encompassing ocean receded and areas of land began to appear. At first, everything was mud and when the snake moved over it, there was a long winding track which became a valley through which rivers could flow. When the mud dried up, part of the earth became flat and part turned into hills.

A Folktale sourced from Wild Himalaya: A Natural History of the Greatest Mountain Range on Earth by Stephen Alter.

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