Officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, Nepal is a landlocked South Asian country. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain and borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China to the north and India to the south, east, and west. At the same time, it is narrowly separated from Bangladesh by the Siliguri Corridor and from Bhutan by the Indian state of Sikkim. Nepal has a diverse geography, including fertile plains, subalpine forested hills, and eight of the world’s ten tallest mountains, including Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Kathmandu is the nation’s capital and the largest city.

The name Nepal is first recorded in texts from the Vedic period of the Indian subcontinent, when Hinduism was founded. Before the unification of Nepal, the Kathmandu Valley was known as Nepal. The precise origin of the term Nepal is uncertain. Nepal appears in ancient Indian literary texts dating back to the fourth century AD.

According to Hindu mythology, Nepal derives its name from an ancient Hindu sage called Ne, referred to variously as Ne Muni or Nemi. According to Pashupati Purāna, as a place protected by Ne, the country in the heart of the Himalayas came to be known as Nepāl. According to Nepal Mahātmya, Nemi was charged with protecting the country by Pashupati. According to Buddhist mythology, Manjushri Bodhisattva drained a primordial lake of serpents to create the Nepal valley and proclaimed that Adi-Buddha Ne would take care of the community that would settle it. As the cherished of Ne, the valley would be called Nepāl. According to Gopalarājvamshāvali, the genealogy of the ancient Gopala dynasty compiled c. 1380s, Nepal is named after Nepa the cowherd, the founder of the Nepali scion of the Abhiras. In this account, the cow that issued milk to the spot, at which Nepa discovered the Jyotirlinga of Pashupatināth upon investigation, was also named Ne.

Norwegian Indologist Christian Lassen proposed that Nepāla was a compound of Nipa meaning the foot of a mountain and ala, a short suffix for alaya meaning abode, and so Nepāla meant “the abode at the foot of the mountain.” It has also been proposed that Nepa is a Tibeto-Burman stem consisting of Ne meaning cattle and Pa, or keeper, reflecting the fact that early inhabitants of the valley were Gopalas or cowherds, and Mahispalas, or buffalo herders. Suniti Kumar Chatterji believed Nepal originated from Tibeto-Burman roots, with Ne having uncertain meaning as multiple possibilities exist and pala or bal, whose meaning is lost entirely.

By 55,000 years ago, the first modern humans had arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa, where they had earlier evolved. The earliest known modern human remains in South Asia date to about 30,000 years ago and the oldest discovered archaeological evidence of human settlements in Nepal dates to around the same time. The earliest inhabitants of modern Nepal and adjoining areas are believed to be people from the Indus Valley Civilization. By 4000 BC, the Tibeto-Burmese people had reached Nepal either directly across the Himalayas from Tibet or via Myanmar and north-east India or both. There was a substratum of a race of pre-Dravidians and Dravidians, who were in Nepal even before the Newars, who formed the majority of the ancient inhabitants of the valley of Kathmandu.

By the late Vedic period, Nepal was being mentioned in various Hindu texts, such as the late Vedic Atharvaveda Pariśiṣṭa and the post-Vedic Atharvashirsha Upanishad. The Gopal Bansa was the oldest dynasty to be mentioned in various texts as the earliest rulers of the central Himalayan kingdom known by the name Nepal. The Gopalas were followed by the Kiratas, who ruled for over 16 centuries, by some accounts. According to the Mahabharata, the then-Kirata king went to take part in the Battle of Kurukshetra. In the south-eastern region, Janakpurdham was the capital of the prosperous kingdom of Videha or Mithila, which extended down to the Ganges and was home to King Janaka and his daughter, Sita.

Around 600 BC, small kingdoms and confederations of clans arose in the southern regions of Nepal. From one of these, the Shakya polity, arose a prince who later renounced his status to lead an ascetic life, founded Buddhism, and came to be known as Gautama Buddha, traditionally dated 563–483 BC. Nepal came to be established as a land of spirituality and refuge in the intervening centuries, played an important role in transmitting Buddhism to East Asia via Tibet, and helped preserve Hindu and Buddhist manuscripts.

By 250 BC, the southern regions had come under the influence of the Maurya Empire. Emperor Ashoka made a pilgrimage to Lumbini and erected a pillar at Buddha’s birthplace, the inscriptions on which mark the starting point for the properly recorded history of Nepal. Ashoka also visited the Kathmandu valley and built monuments commemorating Gautama Buddha’s visit there. By the 4th century AD, much of Nepal was under the influence of the Gupta Empire.

In the Kathmandu valley, the Kiratas were pushed eastward by the Licchavis, and the Licchavi dynasty came into power around 400 AD. The Lichchhavis built monuments and left a series of inscriptions and Nepal’s history of the period is pieced together almost entirely from them. Parts of Nepal and Licchavi were later under the direct influences of the Tibetan empire. The Licchavi dynasty went into decline in the late 8th century and was followed by a Thakuri rule. Thakuri kings ruled over the country up to the middle of the 11th century AD; not much is known of this period and is often called the dark period.

In the 11th century, a powerful empire of Khas people emerged in western Nepal whose territory at its highest peak included much of western Nepal as well as parts of western Tibet and Uttarakhand of India. By the 14th century, the empire had splintered into loosely associated Baise rajyas, literally 22 states as they were counted. The rich culture and language of the Khas people spread throughout Nepal and as far as Indo-China in the intervening centuries; their language, later renamed the Nepali language, became the lingua franca of Nepal as well as much of Northeast India.

In southeastern Nepal, Simraungarh annexed Mithila around 1100 AD, and the unified Tirhut stood as a powerful kingdom for more than 200 years, even ruling over Kathmandu for a time. After another 300 years of Muslim rule, Tirhut came under the control of the Sens of Makawanpur. In the eastern hills, a confederation of Kirat principalities ruled the area between Kathmandu and Bengal.

In the Kathmandu valley, the Mallas, who have made several appearances in Nepalese history since ancient times, had established themselves in Kathmandu and Patan by the middle of the 14th century. The Mallas ruled the valley first under the suzerainty of Tirhut but established independent reign by the late 14th century as Tirhut went into decline. In the late 14th century, Jayasthiti Malla introduced widespread socio-economic reforms, the principal of which was the caste system. By dividing the indigenous non-Aryan Buddhist population into castes modelled after the four Varna systems of Hinduism, he provided an influential model for the Sanskritisation and Hinduisation of the indigenous non-Hindu tribal populations in all principalities throughout Nepal. By the middle of the 15th century, Kathmandu had become a powerful empire which, according to Kirkpatrick, extended from Digarchi or Sigatse in Tibet to Tirhut and Gaya in India. In the late 15th century, Malla princes divided their kingdom into four: Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur in the valley and Banepa to the east. The competition for prestige among these brotherly kingdoms saw the flourishing of art and architecture in central Nepal and the building of famous Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur Durbar Squares; their division and mistrust led to their fall in the late 18th century, and ultimately, the unification of Nepal into a modern state.

Apart from one destructive sacking of Kathmandu Valley in the mid-14th century, Nepal remains largely untouched by the Muslim invasion of India that began in the 11th century. The Mughal period saw an influx of high-caste Hindus from India into Nepal. They soon intermingled with the Khas people and by the 16th century, there were about 50 Rajput-ruled principalities in Nepal, including the 22 or Baisi states and, to their east in west-central Nepal, 24 or Chaubisi states. There emerged a view that Nepal remained the true bastion of unadulterated Hinduism at a time when Indian culture had been influenced by centuries of Mughal, followed by British rule. Gorkha, one of the Baisi states, emerged as an influential and ambitious kingdom with a reputation for justice after it codified the first Hinduism-based laws in the Nepalese hills.

During King Mahendra’s reign, Nepal experienced a period of industrial, political, and economic change. In the mid-18th century, Prithvi Narayan Shah, a Gorkha king, set out to put together what would become present-day Nepal. He embarked on his mission by securing the neutrality of the bordering mountain kingdoms. After several bloody battles and sieges, notably the Battle of Kirtipur, he managed to conquer the Kathmandu Valley in 1769. The Gorkha control reached its height when the Kumaon and Garhwal Kingdoms in the west of Sikkim in the east came under Nepalese control. A dispute with Tibet over the control of mountain passes and inner Tingri valleys of Tibet prompted the Qing Emperor of China to start the Sino-Nepali war, compelling the Nepalis to retreat to their borders in the north. The rivalry between the Kingdom of Nepal and the East India Company over the control of states bordering Nepal eventually led to the Anglo-Nepali War (1815–16). At first, the British underestimated the Nepalis and were soundly defeated until committing more military resources than they had anticipated needing. Thus began the reputation of Gurkhas as fierce and ruthless soldiers. The war ended in the Sugauli Treaty, under which Nepal ceded recently captured lands.

Factionalism inside the royal family led to a period of instability. In 1846, a plot was discovered revealing that the reigning queen had planned to overthrow Jung Bahadur Kunwar, a fast-rising military leader. This led to the Kot massacre; armed clashes between military personnel and administrators loyal to the queen led to the execution of several hundred princes and chieftains around the country. Bir Narsingh Kunwar emerged victoriously, founded the Rana dynasty, and came to be known as Jung Bahadur Rana. The king was made a titular figure, and the post of Prime Minister was made powerful and hereditary. The Ranas were staunchly pro-British and assisted them during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and later in both World Wars. In 1860, some parts of the western Terai region were gifted to Nepal by the British as a friendly gesture because of her military help to sustain British control in India during the rebellion. These lands were known as Naya Muluk or new country. In 1923, the United Kingdom and Nepal formally signed an agreement of friendship that superseded the Sugauli Treaty of 1816. The Hindu practice of Sati, in which a widow sacrificed herself in the funeral pyre of her husband, was banned in 1919, and slavery was officially abolished in 1924. The Rana rule was marked by tyranny, debauchery, economic exploitation and religious persecution.

In the late 1940s, newly emerging pro-democracy movements and political parties in Nepal were critical of the Rana autocracy. Following the success of the Indian Independence Movement, which Nepalese activists had taken part in, with India’s support and cooperation of King Tribhuvan, the Nepali Congress was successful in toppling the Rana regime, and establishing a parliamentary democracy. After a decade of power wrangling between the king and the government, King Mahendra, who ruled between 1955 and 1972, scrapped the democratic experiment in 1960, and a partyless Panchayat system was made to govern Nepal. The political parties were banned and politicians were imprisoned or exiled. The Panchayat rule modernised the country, introducing reforms and developing infrastructure, but curtailed liberties and imposed heavy censorship. In 1990, the People’s Movement forced King Birendra, who ruled from 1972 to 2001 to accept constitutional reforms and to establish a multiparty democracy.

In 1996, the Maoist Party started a violent bid to replace the royal parliamentary system with a people’s republic. This led to the long Nepali Civil War and more than 16,000 deaths. With the deaths of both the King and the Crown Prince in a massacre in the royal palace, King Birendra’s brother Gyanendra inherited the throne in 2001 and subsequently assumed full executive powers, aiming to quash the Maoist insurgency himself.

The Maoist Party joined mainstream politics following the success of the peaceful democratic revolution of 2006. Nepal became a secular state, and on May 28, 2008, it was declared a federal republic, ending its time-honoured status as the world’s only Hindu kingdom. After a decade of instability and internal strife, which saw two constituent assembly elections, the new constitution was promulgated on 20 September 2015, making Nepal a federal democratic republic divided into seven provinces. Nepal hosts the permanent secretariat of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), of which it is a founding member.

Nepal is roughly trapezoidal, about 800 km long and 200 km wide, with an area of 147,516 sq km. Nepal’s defining geological processes began 75 million years ago when the Indian plate, then part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, began a north-eastward drift caused by seafloor spreading to its southwest, and later, south and southeast. Simultaneously, the vast Tethyn oceanic crust, to its northeast, began to subduct under the Eurasian plate. These dual processes, driven by convection in the Earth’s mantle, both created the Indian Ocean and caused the Indian continental crust eventually to underthrust Eurasia and uplift the Himalayas. The rising barriers blocked the paths of rivers, forming large lakes, which only broke through as late as 100,000 years ago, creating fertile valleys in the middle hills like the Kathmandu Valley. In the western region, rivers that were too strong to be hampered cut some of the world’s deepest gorges. Immediately south of the emerging Himalayas, plate movement created a vast trough that rapidly filled with river-borne sediment and now constitutes the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Nepal lies almost completely within this collision zone, occupying the central sector of the Himalayan arc, nearly one-third of the 2,400 km long Himalayas, with a small strip of southernmost Nepal stretching into the Indo-Gangetic plain and two districts in the northwest stretching up to the Tibetan plateau.

Nepal is divided into three principal physiographic belts known as Himal–Pahad–Terai. Himal is the mountain region containing snow and situated in the Great Himalayan Range; it makes up the northern part of Nepal. It contains the highest elevations in the world, including 8,848.86 m tall Mount Everest or Sagarmāthā in Nepali on the border with China. Seven other of the world’s “eight-thousanders” are in Nepal or on its border with Tibet: Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Kangchenjunga, Dhaulagiri, Annapurna and Manaslu. Pahad is the mountain region that does not generally contain snow. The mountains vary from 800 to 4,000 m in altitude, with progression from subtropical climates below 1,200 m to alpine climates above 3,600 m. The Lower Himalayan Range, reaching 1,500 to 3,000 m, is the southern limit of this region, with subtropical river valleys and “hills” alternating to the north of this range. Population density is high in valleys but notably less so above 2,000 m and very low above 2,500 m, where snow occasionally falls in winter. The southern lowland plains or the Terai bordering India are part of the northern rim of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Terai is the lowland region containing some hill ranges. The plains were formed and are fed by three major Himalayan rivers: the Koshi, the Narayani, and the Karnali, as well as smaller rivers rising below the permanent snowline. This region has a subtropical to tropical climate. The outermost range of the foothills, called the Sivalik Hills or Churia Range, cresting at 700 to 1,000 m, marks the limits of the Gangetic Plain. Broad, low valleys called Inner Terai Valleys or Bhitri Tarai Upatyaka lie north of these foothills in several places.

The Indian plate continues to move north relative to Asia at about 50 mm per year, making Nepal an earthquake-prone zone. Erosion of the Himalayas is a very important source of sediment, which flows to the Indian Ocean. The Saptakoshi, in particular, carries a huge amount of silt out of Nepal but sees an extreme drop in gradient in Bihar, causing severe floods and course changes and is, therefore, known as the sorrow of Bihar. Severe flooding and landslides cause deaths and disease, destroy farmlands, and cripple the transport infrastructure of the country during the monsoon season each year.

Nepal contains a disproportionately large diversity of plants and animals, relative to its size. The country, in its entirety, forms the western portion of the eastern Himalayan biodiversity hotspot, with notable biocultural diversity. The dramatic differences in elevation found in Nepal range from 60 m from sea level in the Terai plains to 8,848 m at Mount Everest, resulting in a variety of biomes. The eastern half of Nepal is richer in biodiversity as it receives more rain, compared to western parts, where arctic desert-type conditions are more common at higher elevations. Nepal is a habitat for 4.0% of all mammal species, 8.9% of bird species, 1.0% of reptile species, 2.5% of amphibian species, 1.9% of fish species, 3.7% of butterfly species, 0.5% of moth species and 0.4% of spider species. In its 35 forest types and 118 ecosystems, Nepal harbours 2% of the flowering plant species, 3% of pteridophytes and 6% of bryophytes. Nepal contains 107 IUCN-designated threatened species, 88 of them animal species, 18 plant species and one species of “fungi or protist” group. These include the endangered Bengal tiger, the red panda, the Asiatic elephant, the Himalayan musk deer, the wild water buffalo and the South Asian river dolphin, as well as the critically endangered gharial, the Bengal florican and the white-rumped vulture, which has become nearly extinct by having ingested the carrion of diclofenac-treated cattle.

Nepal is one of the least developed countries, which ranks 165th in the world in nominal GDP per capita and 162nd in GDP per capita at PPP. The 16.8-million-worker Nepali labour force is the 37th largest in the world. Besides having landlocked, rugged geography, few tangible natural resources and poor infrastructure, the ineffective post-1950 government and the long-running civil war are also factors in stunting the country’s economic growth and development. Debt bondage even involving debtors’ children has been a persistent social problem in the western hills and the Terai, with an estimated 234,600 people or 0.82% of the population, considered enslaved by the Global Slavery Index in 2016.

Tourism is one of the largest and fastest-growing industries in Nepal, employing more than a million people and contributing 7.9% of the total GDP. Most of Nepal’s mountaineering earnings come from Mount Everest, which is more accessible from the Nepalese side. Nepal officially opened to westerners in 1951 and became a popular destination at the end of the hippie trail in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Nepalis are descendants of three major migrations from India, Tibet, and North Burma, as well as the Chinese province of Yunnan via Assam. Among the earliest inhabitants were the Kirat of the eastern region, the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, the aboriginal Tharus of the Terai plains, and the Khas Pahari people of the far-western hills. Despite the migration of a significant section of the population to the Terai in recent years, the majority of Nepalese still live in the central highlands, and the northern mountains are sparsely populated. Nepal is a multicultural and multiethnic country, home to 125 distinct ethnic groups, speaking 123 different mother tongues, and following many indigenous and folk religions in addition to Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity.

Nepal’s diverse linguistic heritage stems from three major language groups: Indo-Aryan, Sino-Tibetan and various indigenous language isolates. The top major languages of Nepal, according to the 2011 census, are Nepali, Maithili, and Bhojpuri, and Nepal is home to at least four indigenous sign languages. A descendent of Sanskrit, Nepali is written in Devanagari script and is the official language and serves as lingua franca among Nepalis of different ethnolinguistic groups. The regional languages Maithili, Awadhi and Bhojpuri are spoken in the southern Terai region; Urdu is common among Nepali Muslims. Varieties of Tibetan are spoken in and north of the higher Himalayas, where standard literary Tibetan is widely understood by those with religious education. Local dialects in the Terai and hills are mostly unwritten, with efforts underway to develop systems for writing many in Devanagari or the Roman alphabet.

Nepal is a secular country, with more than 81% of the population following Hinduism, followed by 9% of the population following Buddhism. Nepal was officially a Hindu kingdom until recently, and Lord Shiva was considered the guardian deity of the country.