Asia physical map
Asia, located almost exclusively in the northern hemisphere, east of Eurasia, is the largest of the seven continents of the planet, with 43 810 582 km², or 8.6% of the world's surface and 29.4% of the surface .
Asia is bounded to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Pacific Ocean, and to the south by the Indian Ocean.
The border with Europe starts with the coast of the eastern Mediterranean, even though Turkey in the Near East extends partly into the Aegean Islands and includes Istanbul on the European side of the Bosphorus. On the north the boundary between the continents of Asia and Europe is commonly regarded as running through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, the Caspian Sea, the Ural River to its source, and a long border generally following the eastern side of the Ural Mountains to the Kara Sea, Russia.
Asia is connected to north Africa by the Red Sea via the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea. In the northeast, the mainland masses of Asia and North America are on the Bering Strait just over 80 km apart. In the southeast of the Malay Archipelago forms the connection to Australia. Map 2007.
The relief of Asia is essentially constituted by a wide plateau, on the edges of which rise strong mountain ranges and to whose northern foot extend with plains that reach the Arctic Ocean, while the South slope is arranged, as in Europe, with three extensive peninsulas. At the center of the entire orographic system is the Pamir plateau, which together with the Tibet plateau is nicknamed "the Roof of the World" (3600 meters above sea level), from which in the West, Northeast and Southeast directions, wide mountain ranges extend. To the southeast of the "orographic knot" of the Pamir extends another great plateau, which is that of Tibet (the most extensive and highest plateau on the world), of greater extension and height (5000 m) than the Pamir itself.
Mountain ranges southwest of the Pamir and Tibet plateaus: from the East of the plateaus the Kunlun Mountains are born that, with the Tian Shan, encloses the depression of the Tarim; further south, the formations of Hedin (7000 m) and Karakoram (8611 m); on the South and Southwest edges of Tibet rise the most important and lofty heights of the Earth: the Himalayas (Everest 8848 m, Kangchenjunga, 8585 m). The central mountainous zone is, then, an extensive country of plateaus of great height in whose edges the imposing mountainous cresting rises. In this way the plateaus are confined, in the form of depressions, in the encirclement of their limiting mountains, for what they are desert or sub-desert (Desert Belt: Arabian Desert, Dasht-e Kavir, Turkestan, Gobi Desert, etc).