Nepal

Nepal rises from the hot Terai plains to the summit of Everest, which Nepalis call Sagarmatha. Eight of the world’s ten highest mountains stand on or within its borders. Below the snows lie the middle hills, terraced for rice and millet, with the lake at Pokhara, and in the south the grasslands of Chitwan shelter one-horned rhinoceroses. The Karnali, the Gandaki and the Koshi carry glacier water south to the Ganges, and the summer monsoon brings most of the year’s rain.

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was born at Lumbini, where a pillar raised by the emperor Ashoka marks the place. In the Kathmandu Valley, Malla kings filled Patan and Bhaktapur with pagoda temples and palace squares built by Newar craftsmen. In 1768 Prithvi Narayan Shah, king of Gorkha, conquered the valley and forged a single kingdom. A war with the East India Company in 1814–16 cost it land but not independence. Hereditary Rana prime ministers held power from 1846 to 1951.

Hindu and Buddhist practice run together, so one shrine may honour both Shiva and the Buddha, and the autumn festivals of Dashain and Tihar bring families home. Dal bhat, lentils with rice, is eaten twice a day, and momo dumplings came over the passes from Tibet. Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa, and Edmund Hillary reached the top of Everest in May 1953. Remittances from workers abroad support many villages, beside trekking, hand-knotted carpets, cardamom, Ilam tea and hydropower sold to India.