Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Himalayas are a mountain range in Asia that separates the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range spans five countries: Nepal, India, China, Bhutan, and Pakistan. It runs in an arc 2400 kilometres long.
The Himalayas were uplifted after the Indian tectonic plate collided with the Eurasian plate. India began splitting from Gondwana 70 million years ago and drove north, and when it met Eurasia its upper crust piled into stacked sheets called nappes. Geophysicist Peter Molnar noted that most of the Himalayas are slices of rock that once were the top part of India's crust.
Yes, the Himalayas are still rising by about 5 millimetres a year. The Indian plate continues to move at 67 millimetres per year and over the next 10 million years will travel 1500 kilometres into Asia, which also keeps the region seismically active.
More than 100 peaks in the Himalayas exceed 7200 metres above sea level, including Mount Everest, the highest peak on Earth. The range also contains several 8000-metre summits such as Dhaulagiri, Annapurna, Kangchenjunga, and Nanga Parbat.
The Himalayas block the colder, dry air of Central Asia from blowing south, which keeps South Asia warmer than other temperate regions and pushes the tropical zone farther north than anywhere else on Earth. They also force the moist Southwest Monsoon to rise and release heavy rain on their southern slopes, an effect called orographic lifting.
Several Himalayan summits are off-limits to climbers because they are sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism. These include Kangchenjunga from the Indian side, Gangkhar Puensum, Machapuchare, Nanda Devi, and Kailash in the Tibetan Transhimalaya.
The Himalayan range encompasses about 15,000 glaciers that store roughly 12000 cubic kilometres of fresh water, making the region the world's third-largest deposit of ice and snow after Antarctica and the Arctic. Studies have measured an approximately 13 percent decrease in glacial coverage over the last 40 to 50 years.