Our results support focused erosion of the southern, tectonically-lower part of the Greater Himalaya in the hangingwall of the MCT Zone, where the summer monsoon reaches its peak intensity (up to 5 m/a), and sediment yields and erosion rates reach 14,100 ± 3400 t/km2 and 5.1 ± 1.2 mm/a. Erosion rates sharply decrease southward in low-relief Lesser Himalayan units (1.6 ± 0.6 mm/a), and also progressively decrease northwards in the high-altitude, tectonically-upper part of the Greater Himalaya, where rainfall decreases rapidly to < 2 m/a. Even areas of extreme topography such as the Manaslu Granite are characterized by relatively low erosion rates (2.4 ±0.9 mm/a), because precipitations become too scarce to feed significant ice flux and glacial activity. Monsoonal rainfall decreases further to < 0.5 m/a in the Tethys Himalayan zone farther north, where erosion rates are 1 mm/a. Coupling between erosion and peak monsoonal rainfall along the southern front of the Greater Himalaya is consistent with both channel-flow models of tectonic extrusion and tectonic uplift above a mid-crustal ramp. Altitude and relief are not the principal factors controlling erosion, and the central Nepal eight-thousanders may be viewed as topographic anomalies in cold desert climate at the southern edge of the Tibetan rain shadow.