Nepal

Nepal is a landlocked country in South Asia, set mostly in the Himalayas between China's Tibet region and India. Eight of the ten highest mountains on earth rise on its soil, among them Mount Everest at 8,848.86 m (29,032 ft).

Kathmandu is the capital and largest city, and Nepali is the official language. Around 600 BC small kingdoms and clan states rose in the south, and from the Shakya clan came Gautama Buddha, born at Lumbini according to tradition, where the Mauryan emperor Ashoka later set up a pillar. The Licchavi dynasty ruled the Kathmandu Valley from about 400 AD, and the valley later became the seat of the Newar confederacy of Nepal Mandala, whose traders ran the Himalayan branch of the Silk Road. In the mid-18th century Prithvi Narayan Shah, king of Gorkha, united the country, and the Kingdom of Nepal was founded in 1768. Nepal was never colonized. Parliamentary democracy came in 1951, the country became a republic in 2008, and the constitution of 2015 made it a federal parliamentary republic of seven provinces.

Its 147,516 km2 (56,956 sq mi) fall into three belts: the snowy Himal, the middle hills and the plains of the Terai. Tourism employs more than a million people, and other industries include carpets, textiles, cement and rice, jute and sugar mills. Rivers that flow all year down steep slopes suit the country to hydroelectric power. Nepal joined the World Trade Organization in 2004.

Lumbini, Sagarmatha National Park and seven monument zones in the Kathmandu Valley are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Newa artisans of the valley developed the pagoda temple of carved wood and the ankhijhyal window, which lets people look out without being seen. Bhanubhakta Acharya wrote the first major works in Nepali, among them a Ramayana. The flag, a double pennant, is the only national flag that is not rectangular. Dal bhat, rice with lentils, is the everyday meal, and Nepali momo dumplings are spiced more strongly than their northern cousins. Gurkha soldiers from Nepal have served in the British and Indian armies for about two centuries.