Where is Nepal?
Where is Nepal?
Nepal is located in Asia. Neighboring countries are India, Bhutan, Tibet, and China.
We travel a lot and of course, people ask us where we are from. It’s fun to see the puzzled look on the faces of many who are searching their mind for the exact location of this place. We have heard: South America right? – no
You are Nepali – that’s pizza, is that near Italy? – no way
It’s an island right? – not even kind of close
Where is Nepal exactly?
It’s right between India and Tibet (China) in the Himalayan mountain range. If you’ve seen the recent children’s movie “Planes,” you’ll know that from India you just head toward the Himalaya, fly through a tunnel and end up in Shangri-La, aka Nepal. Although the place depicted in this film looks a lot like our neighbor, Bhutan. And just for the record, we have no trains going through the Himalaya, or any where else in Nepal. I think the creators of Planes must have learned about Nepal from the Everest Ride at Walt Disney World, which is absolutely fun, but culturally and geographically incorrect. (But who cares about that, the Everest Ride is still fun.)
Nepal is in the Himalaya, or not…
People almost exclusively think of the geography of Nepal as being alpine, rocky, snowy and mountainous. But that’s not really true. Only part of our land is alpine and mountainous, we also have great valleys, jungles and even arid desert like conditions on the border of India.
Nepal is Nepal, not Tibet, not Bhutan, not India
Nepal gets a lot of comparisons, but we are really a “melting pot” as our American visitors like to say. Scholarly types like to wonder if Nepali people are like Tibetans, Indians, or Mongolians…. How about Burmese? No, Nepalis are Nepalis. All a bit ethnically different, and with unique customs depending on whether you are Sherpa, Magar, Gurung, Rai, Limbu, Tamang, Lopa, or any of the Hindu castes. But the simple answer is, we are all just Nepali. There is however a sort of start to the history of our land and people, and that is found in the heart of Nepal – Gorkha. But that is another history altogether!
