Nepal

The Kathmandu Valley was the cradle of Nepali civilisation: the early historic Licchavi period, then the medieval Malla kingdoms, whose three rival city-states — Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur — produced a golden age of Newar art and the pagoda-temple architecture on their Durbar Squares. In 1768–69 Prithvi Narayan Shah of the hill principality of Gorkha conquered the valley and unified Nepal under the Shah dynasty.

Expansion was checked by war with British India in 1814–16, which fixed the borders and began the tradition of Gurkha recruitment into foreign armies. From 1846 the Rana family ruled as hereditary prime ministers, keeping the Shah kings as figureheads and the country isolated for a century, until a 1951 revolt restored the monarchy. A brief democratic opening was ended by a royal coup in 1960 and a party-less system that lasted until the People's Movement of 1990 forced multiparty rule.

A Maoist insurgency from 1996 to 2006 killed some 17,000 people. In 2001 the crown prince shot dead most of the royal family and himself. King Gyanendra's seizure of absolute power in 2005 triggered a second mass uprising, and in 2008 Nepal abolished the monarchy and became a federal secular republic. A new constitution followed in 2015, promulgated weeks after an earthquake that killed around 9,000 people; politics since has been a churn of unstable coalitions led by the same few figures.

Hinduism and Buddhism are so intertwined in Nepal that the same shrine, festival, or deity is often shared, and Kathmandu even worships a living goddess, the Kumari, a young Newar girl. The festival calendar is dense: Dashain, the fifteen-day celebration of the goddess Durga and of family; Tihar, the festival of lights, with days honouring crows, dogs, and cows; Holi; Indra Jatra; and the Tibetan new year, Losar, in the mountains.

The Kathmandu Valley's Newars built a distinct urban civilisation of brick and carved wood — tiered pagoda temples, latticed windows, sunken stone water spouts, and courtyard bahal — and keep their own language, cuisine, and craft guilds. Beyond the valley, dozens of hill and mountain peoples — Gurung, Magar, Tamang, Rai, Limbu, Sherpa, Thakali — and the Madhesi and Tharu of the Terai each have their own languages and customs.

The Gurkha soldier and his curved khukuri knife, the Sherpa high-altitude guide, and the plate of daal bhaat are all part of how Nepal sees itself. Greetings are made with palms together and a namaste, shoes come off at temples and homes, and the cow is sacred and protected.

The Kathmandu Valley is the crowded, dust-hazed, fast-growing core of the country, with its traffic, its earthquake rebuilding, and a young urban scene. The middle hills are terraced farming country, hard and subsistence-based, steadily losing people as men leave for work abroad and families follow to the towns or down to the Terai. The Terai plains, with their open border and close cultural ties to India, are now the demographic and economic centre.

Nepal is one of Asia's poorest countries, and remittances — sent home by millions working in the Gulf, Malaysia, South Korea, and India — make up around a quarter of the economy. The village shop built on Gulf wages, and the family split across continents, are the defining social facts, along with the human cost of that migration.

Agriculture still occupies most of the workforce; tourism and mountaineering, hydropower now being developed for export to India, tea, carpets, and garments fill out the rest. Religion runs through the daily routine, from the morning puja to the festival that closes the shops.

The everyday meal, eaten twice a day by most Nepalis, is daal bhaat: steamed rice, lentil soup, a vegetable curry, pickle, and often greens, curd, or a little meat, with unlimited refills. Momos, steamed or fried dumplings served with a tomato-and-sesame relish, are the national snack.

Newari cuisine is a rich tradition of its own — chatamari rice-flour pancakes, bara lentil patties, spiced grilled choila, the ceremonial samay baji platter, and sweet yomari dumplings, washed down with the local spirit aila. Thakali food from the Annapurna region is a refined version of the daal bhaat set. In the mountains the cooking turns Tibetan: thukpa noodle soup, tsampa, dried meat, and butter tea.

Ring-shaped sel roti appears at festivals, fermented greens (gundruk) and dried meat (sukuti) preserve the harvest, and spiced milk tea (chiya) is constant. Everest and Gorkha beers, distilled raksi, and millet tongba sipped hot through a straw are the drinks.

The Kathmandu Valley alone holds seven UNESCO monument zones: the Durbar Squares of Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur, largely rebuilt since 2015; the great Buddhist stupas of Boudhanath and hilltop Swayambhunath; and the Hindu temple and cremation ghats of Pashupatinath on the Bagmati. Thamel is the trekking and traveller hub.

Trekking is the main draw. The Everest Base Camp route climbs through the Khumbu past Namche Bazaar and Tengboche monastery under Ama Dablam; the Annapurna region offers the Circuit, the Base Camp sanctuary trek, and the Poon Hill sunrise; and more remote routes lead into Langtang, around Manaslu, and up to the walled Tibetan-Buddhist kingdom of Upper Mustang. Pokhara, on a lake below the Annapurnas and the Fishtail peak, is the relaxed base for much of this, and a paragliding centre.

In the Terai, Chitwan National Park offers rhino, tiger, and gharial on jeep and canoe safaris, and Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha, has the Maya Devi Temple and a monastic park of temples built by Buddhist nations from around the world. Scenic mountain flights from Kathmandu run the length of the Himalaya, and the rivers off the hills — the Trishuli, Sun Koshi, and Karnali — are classic whitewater.