Pre-cambrian metamorphic rocks form the bulk of the Himalaya. These tocks represents the frontal part of the Gondwana which pushed northwards, uplifting the Himalayas as it pressed against the Asian land masses. It is only in the Soiti basin and in a few other localities that large outcrops of marine sediments from Palaezoic and Mesozoic times can be seen. Plutonic rocks, such as granites and granodisrites of Pre-miocene age cover extensive area in the northern part of Jammu and Kashmir. Many of the high peaks such as Makalu, Manalsu and Nanga Parbat are formed gneisses and schists.


 The structure of the outer or sub-Himalayan ranges is a generally of great simplicity, they are made up of a series of broad anticlines and synclines of the normal type, a modification of the Jura type of mountain structure, These outer ranges, dissected into a series of escarpments and desolopes, are separated by narrow, longitudinal tectonic valleys or depressions called Duns. Many of the ranges of the outer Himalayas and several of the middle Himalayas as well, are of the orthoclinal type of structure. In the Nappe zone of the Himalayas, at the Shimla-Kumaon area, a system--of overfolds of the recumbent type, served by reserved faults that have passed into thrust planes, along which large slices of the mountains have moved bodily southward.

 The structure of the passes of the inner Himalayas in the western part have a comparatively simple type of mountain tectonics. The great sedimentary basins of Hazara and Kashmir lying between the crystalline axis and the zone of the great thrusts (the nappe zone show a system of normal open anticlines. The Central zone, however, is not wholly crystalline. Parts of it are capped by unmetamorphosed Palaeo-Mesozoic members of he Tibetan zone of geosynclinical facies, lying to its north. 

The broad features of the Himalayas are solely due to movements of aplifts, the characteristic scenery of the mountains, the seried lines of range pehind range, separated by deep defiles and valleys, the bewildering number of water-sheds, peaks and passages and other rugged features, which give to he mountains their characteristic relief and outline are the work of the roding agents, playing on rocks of different structures and varying hardness and write a very brief