Eastern South Asia is . Bangladesh has a tropical monsoon climate. The Sundarbans in Bangladesh, which is shared with India, is a UNESCO world heritage site. Cox's Bazar Beach is one of the world's longest beaches. Bhutan is roughly the size of Switzerland. It is located on the southern slopes of the eastern Himalayas, landlocked between the Tibet Autonomous Region to the north and the Indian states of Sikkim, West Bengal, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh to the west and south. The land consists mostly of steep and high mountains crisscrossed by a network of swift rivers, which form deep valleys before draining into
Himalayas on the Indian plain and limiting rainfall on the Tibetan plateau. The Himalayas have profoundly shaped the cultures of the Indian subcontinent; many Himalayan peaks are sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism. The name of the range derives from the Sanskrit "Himā-laya" (, "Abode of Snow"), from "himá" (, "snow") and "ā-laya" (, "receptacle, dwelling"). They are now known as the "", usually shortened to the "Himalayas". Formerly, they were described in the singular as the ""Himalaya"". This was also previously transcribed "Himmaleh", as in Emily Dickinson's poetry and Henry David Thoreau's essays. The mountains are known as the "Himālaya" in