Discover Nepal guide
Nepal Knowledge Base
A structured reference to Nepal's geography, society, history, culture and civic life.
Physical Geography
Nepal runs 885 km east–west but averages only about 193 km north–south — yet that narrow strip climbs from 59 m in Jhapa to 8,848.86 m at Sagarmatha, a greater vertical range than any country on Earth.
Three belts define the land: the Terai plains (about 17% of the area), the mid-hills of the Mahabharat range, and the Himal — home to eight of the world's fourteen 8,000 m peaks. Rivers like the Koshi, Gandaki and Karnali cut the world's deepest gorges between them.
Climate Zones
Nepali geography textbooks divide the country into altitude climate zones: tropical and subtropical below about 2,000 m, temperate to 3,000 m, subalpine to 4,000 m, alpine to the permanent snow line, and the trans-Himalayan cold desert beyond the main range.
The monsoon (June–September) delivers most annual rain to the southern slopes, while Mustang and Dolpo sit in the rain shadow — dry when the rest of the country soaks. October–November and March–April give the clear-sky windows trekkers plan around.
Government & Federal Structure
The 2015 constitution established Nepal as a federal democratic republic with three tiers of government: the federal centre, seven provinces and 753 local levels (metropolitan cities, municipalities and rural municipalities) grouped within 77 districts.
Provinces — Koshi, Madhesh, Bagmati, Gandaki, Lumbini, Karnali and Sudurpashchim — have their own assemblies; the president is the ceremonial head of state and the prime minister leads the government formed in the House of Representatives.
Economy in Brief
Agriculture employs the largest share of the workforce, with remittances from abroad a pillar of national income. Tourism — trekking, mountaineering and heritage travel — is the largest foreign-currency earner within services, concentrated in Kathmandu, Pokhara, Chitwan and Lumbini.
Hydropower potential runs to tens of thousands of megawatts across the river systems, and the eastern tea estates of Ilam anchor a small but famous export agriculture.
Society & People
The 2011 census recorded over 125 caste and ethnic groups and 123 spoken languages. Nepali is the official lingua franca; Maithili, Bhojpuri, Tharu, Tamang and Nepal Bhasa (Newar) each carry centuries of their own literature.
Hinduism and Buddhism interweave through daily life — shared shrines, shared festivals — alongside Islam, Kirat Mundhum and Christianity. The pluralism is structural, not decorative: a single district routinely hosts half a dozen communities with distinct languages.