Did India Speed-Up to Create the Himalayas? - NO! 

A correspondent has sent me THIS LINK (and its ACADEMIC PAPER FOUNDATION) for which I am very grateful.

It was long thought India, on its journey from the edge of Africa to the site of its crashing into Eurasia, to create the Himalayas, sped up. The reason for the speed-up was that it "slid off" the dome caused by the rising of the Reunion mantle plume.

This seemed too simple for the authors of the academic paper. Their studies showed that there was a speed-up, not only in India's travels but, at the same time, the separations of Africa / Antarctica, Africa / South America and Antarctica / South America all sped up.

The time period was at the boundary between the Cretaceous and the Tertiary - the chrons C28-C29 to the aficionados of the period. They conclude that this period was actually 70% longer than previously thought.

And the result is that Plate Tectonics, once again follows the rules.

Ubiquitous 67 Ma acceleration in model divergence rates for five plate pairs in Indo-Atlantic circuit (see text for model references). Light-gray bars—magnetic reversal time scale of Gradstein et al. (2012), where C25n–C32n.2—magnetic chrons. Red hatching—Deccan volcanism.