ABSTRACT
Asia is the largest continent in terms of size and population and hence has more stories than any other chapter in this book. Asia, including the countries of the Middle East, forms approximately 30 per cent of the land area of the world (Merriam-Webster, 2007), spreading from Turkey in the west to Indonesia and parts of northern Russia in the east. This means the climate is very diverse, from countries like the Maldives and parts of Indonesia, that lie on or very close to the equator, to northern Russia in the Arctic Circle. Further extremes come from Asia being the site of the highest mountains in the world, all found in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges which lie to the south and west of the Tibetan plateau.
