Asia: The Biggest Continent on Earth

Imagine standing on the highest mountain on Earth, surrounded by clouds and snow so deep it reaches your shoulders. Or picture a city so crowded that more people live there than in some entire countries. Both of these places are in Asia! Asia is a continent — a huge area of land. It is the largest continent on our planet. Look at a globe or world map. Can you find the big landmass that stretches from the cold Arctic in the north all the way to warm tropical islands in the south? That is Asia.

Asia covers about 44 million square kilometres. That is nearly one third of all the land on Earth! It has 48 countries. You may already know some of them: China, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Russia (the Asian part), and Indonesia are all in Asia. Asia has an incredible variety of landscapes. A landscape is the type of land you can see in a place. In the north, Siberia in Russia has vast frozen plains called tundra. In the south, countries like Indonesia and the Philippines have lush rainforests and thousands of islands. The Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia is one of the largest deserts in the world — cold in winter and scorching hot in summer. The Himalayas are a great mountain range in South Asia. Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth at 8,849 metres above sea level, stands in the Himalayas between Nepal and China. Asia also has mighty rivers. The Yangtze River in China is the longest river in Asia and third longest in the world. Now let us think about the people. More than 4.7 billion people live in Asia. That is more than half of all the people on Earth! China and India are the two most populated countries in the world, and both are in Asia. People in Asia speak thousands of different languages and follow many different religions and traditions. From the rice farmers of Vietnam to the tech workers of South Korea, Asia's people have hugely varied ways of life.