Rivers of Asia

Last reviewed on 2026-04-28.

Asian civilisation has been organised around rivers for as long as there has been writing. The earliest cities of Mesopotamia sat between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Indus Valley civilisation centred on the Indus. The capitals of imperial China hugged the Yellow and Yangtze. Today, more than half of the world’s population still lives in the basin of one of the great Asian rivers. This page walks through them roughly from east to west, with notes on their courses, the countries they cross, and the cities that depend on them.

Yangtze (Chang Jiang)

The Yangtze is the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world, running about 6,300 kilometres from the Tibetan Plateau through central China to the East China Sea at Shanghai. The river irrigates one of the most agriculturally productive zones in the world, supports inland shipping all the way to Chongqing, and powers the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric station by installed capacity. Major cities along its course include Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shanghai.

Yellow River (Huang He)

The Yellow River is shorter than the Yangtze but has been just as important historically. It runs about 5,500 kilometres across northern China, beginning in the Bayan Har mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and ending at the Bohai Sea. Its name comes from the colour of its silt: the river carries an exceptional sediment load picked up from the Loess Plateau, which makes it fertile but also unstable. Historically it has shifted course many times in catastrophic floods, earning the nickname “China’s sorrow”.

Mekong

The Mekong rises on the Tibetan Plateau, runs for around 4,300 kilometres, and crosses or borders six countries before entering the South China Sea: China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The Lao capital, Vientiane, sits on it; so does Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, where the river splits into the Bassac and the Tonle Sap connects to the great freshwater lake. The Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam is one of the most productive rice-growing regions in the world.

The Mekong’s flow is unusually variable. The Tonle Sap river in Cambodia famously reverses direction with the seasons: in the rainy season it flows backwards from the Mekong into the lake, and in the dry season it drains the other way. Dams in the upper basin and along its tributaries have reshaped the seasonal flow over the past two decades.

Ganges

The Ganges (Ganga) is the most culturally central river in India. It rises in the Himalayas at Gangotri, runs about 2,500 kilometres south-east across the Indo-Gangetic Plain, joins the Yamuna at Allahabad and the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh, and discharges into the Bay of Bengal through the world’s largest delta. The cities of Varanasi, Patna, and Kolkata all sit on it. The Ganges basin supports one of the densest agricultural populations in the world.

Brahmaputra

The Brahmaputra rises on the Tibetan Plateau as the Yarlung Tsangpo, flows east across China for about 1,600 kilometres, then turns sharply south to enter India as the Brahmaputra and finally Bangladesh, where it joins the Ganges to form the combined delta. The river is unusual in that its upper reach in Tibet flows in the opposite direction from its lower reach in India — one of the longest reversed courses among major rivers.

Indus

The Indus rises in the Tibetan Plateau, runs through the Pamirs into Pakistan, and discharges into the Arabian Sea south of Karachi after a course of about 3,200 kilometres. Its basin is the historical home of the Indus Valley civilisation and remains the agricultural backbone of Pakistan. The river is shared and managed under the Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan, which allocates the western tributaries (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) to Pakistan and the eastern tributaries (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) to India.

Tigris and Euphrates

The Tigris and Euphrates rise close to one another in the mountains of eastern Turkey, run roughly parallel through Syria and Iraq, and join near the head of the Persian Gulf as the Shatt al-Arab, which forms part of the boundary with Iran before reaching the sea. The land between them is the historical Mesopotamia. Today the rivers carry the water for Iraq’s farming heartland and pass directly through Baghdad, on the Tigris, and Mosul, on the same river upstream.

Amur (Heilong Jiang)

The Amur, called the Heilong Jiang in Chinese, forms much of the border between China and Russia in the far north-east of Asia. It runs about 4,500 kilometres before discharging into the Sea of Okhotsk. The Amur basin is sparsely populated by Asian standards but supports the cities of Khabarovsk on the Russian side and Heihe on the Chinese side, and is one of the few major rivers in Asia where most of the basin remains undammed.

Amu Darya and Syr Darya

The two great rivers of Central Asia rise in the Pamirs and Tian Shan and run roughly westward toward the basin of the Aral Sea. The Amu Darya, the larger of the two, flows through Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. The Syr Darya rises in Kyrgyzstan and crosses Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Heavy diversion of both rivers for cotton irrigation since the mid-twentieth century is the main cause of the shrinking of the Aral Sea, which has lost most of its surface area in living memory.

Irrawaddy and Salween

The Irrawaddy is the central river of Myanmar, running about 2,200 kilometres from the eastern Himalayas to the Andaman Sea through Naypyidaw and Yangon. The Salween, longer and less navigable, rises in Tibet, crosses China as the Nu Jiang, and forms part of the border between Myanmar and Thailand before reaching the same sea.

Jordan and Litani

By the standards of the rivers above, the rivers of the Levant are tiny — but they are politically and historically charged out of proportion to their size. The Jordan rises near Mount Hermon, runs along the borders of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, passes through the Sea of Galilee, and ends in the Dead Sea, which is the lowest point on land in the world.

Common patterns

• Most begin in the same place. The Yangtze, Yellow, Mekong, Salween, Brahmaputra, Indus, and Ganges all rise in the Tibetan Plateau or its surrounding mountains. That single high zone feeds the agricultural systems of half the continent.
• Many cross multiple countries. The Mekong (six), the Tigris and Euphrates (three each), the Amu Darya (four), and the Brahmaputra (three) are all transboundary rivers, which makes water management an active political issue rather than a purely technical one.
• Capital cities cluster on rivers. Baghdad, Damascus, Hanoi, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Tashkent, Kathmandu (on the smaller Bagmati), Delhi (on the Yamuna), and Seoul (on the Han) all owe their location to a river. The same is true of most of the other cities mentioned on this page.
• Deltas are the engine of food production. The Mekong, Ganges-Brahmaputra, Indus, Yangtze, and Yellow deltas together feed an outsize share of Asia’s population. They are also among the regions most exposed to sea-level rise.

For the parallel breakdown of the highlands these rivers come from, see mountain ranges of Asia. To browse the countries each river crosses, use the regional pages: South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, and West Asia.