The first interstellar objects discovered were rogue planets, planets ejected from their original stellar system (e.g., OTS 44 or Cha 110913−773444), though they are difficult to distinguish from sub-brown dwarfs, planet-mass objects that formed in interstellar space as stars do.
The first interstellar object which was discovered traveling through the Solar System was 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017. The second was 2I/Borisov in 2019. They both possess significant hyperbolic excess velocity, indicating they did not originate in the Solar System. The discovery of ʻOumuamua inspired the identification of CNEOS 2014-01-08, also known as the Manus Island fireball, as an interstellar object that impacted the Earth. This was confirmed by the U.S. Space Command in 2022 based on the object's velocity relative to the Sun. In May 2023, astronomers reported the possible capture of other interstellar objects in Near Earth Orbit (NEO) over the years.
Nomenclature
With
the first discovery of an interstellar object in the Solar System, the
IAU has proposed a new series of small-body designations for
interstellar objects, the I numbers, similar to the comet numbering system. The Minor Planet Center
will assign the numbers. Provisional designations for interstellar
objects will be handled using the C/ or A/ prefix (comet or asteroid),
as appropriate.
Astronomers estimate that several interstellar objects of extrasolar origin (like ʻOumuamua) pass inside the orbit of Earth each year, and that 10,000 are passing inside the orbit of Neptune on any given day.
Interstellar comets occasionally pass through the inner Solar System and approach with random velocities, mostly from the direction of the constellation Hercules because the Solar System is moving in that direction, called the solar apex. Until the discovery of 'Oumuamua, the fact that no comet with a speed greater than the Sun's escape velocity
had been observed was used to place upper limits to their density in
interstellar space. A paper by Torbett indicated that the density was no
more than 1013 (10 trillion) comets per cubic parsec. Other analyses, of data from LINEAR, set the upper limit at 4.5×10−4/AU3, or 1012 (1 trillion) comets per cubic parsec. A more recent estimate by David C. Jewitt and colleagues, following the detection of 'Oumuamua, predicts that "The steady-state population of similar, ~100 m scale interstellar objects inside the orbit of Neptune is ~1×104, each with a residence time of ~10 years."
Current models of Oort cloud
formation predict that more comets are ejected into interstellar space
than are retained in the Oort cloud, with estimates varying from 3 to
100 times as many. Other simulations suggest that 90–99% of comets are ejected. There is no reason to believe comets formed in other star systems would not be similarly scattered. Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb demonstrated that the Oort Cloud could have been formed from ejected planetesimals from other stars in the Sun's birth cluster.
It is possible for objects orbiting a star to be ejected due to
interaction with a third massive body, thereby becoming interstellar
objects. Such a process was initiated in the early 1980s when C/1980 E1,
initially gravitationally bound to the Sun, passed near Jupiter and was
accelerated sufficiently to reach escape velocity from the Solar
System. This changed its orbit from elliptical to hyperbolic and made
it the most eccentric known object at the time, with an eccentricity of 1.057. It is heading for interstellar space.
Due to present observational difficulties, an interstellar object can usually only be detected if it passes through the Solar System, where it can be distinguished by its strongly hyperbolic trajectory and hyperbolic excess velocity of more than a few km/s, proving that it is not gravitationally bound to the Sun. In contrast, gravitationally bound objects follow elliptic orbits around the Sun. (There are a few objects whose orbits are so close to parabolic that their gravitationally bound status is unclear.)
An interstellar comet can probably, on rare occasions, be captured into a heliocentric orbit while passing through the Solar System. Computer simulations show that Jupiter is the only planet massive enough to capture one, and that this can be expected to occur once every sixty million years. Comets Machholz 1 and Hyakutake C/1996 B2 are possible examples of such comets. They have atypical chemical makeups for comets in the Solar System.
Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb
proposed a search for ʻOumuamua-like objects which are trapped in the
Solar System as a result of losing orbital energy through a close
encounter with Jupiter. They identified centaur candidates, such as 2017 SV13 and 2018 TL6, as captured interstellar objects that could be visited by dedicated missions. The authors pointed out that future sky surveys, such as Vera C. Rubin Observatory, should find many candidates.
Recent research suggests that asteroid 514107 Kaʻepaokaʻawela
may be a former interstellar object, captured some 4.5 billion years
ago, as evidenced by its co-orbital motion with Jupiter and its
retrograde orbit around the Sun. In addition, comet C/2018 V1 (Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto)
has a significant probability (72.6%) of having an extrasolar
provenance although an origin in the Oort cloud cannot be excluded. Harvard astronomers suggest that matter—and potentially dormant spores—can be exchanged across vast distances.
The detection of ʻOumuamua crossing the inner Solar System confirms the
possibility of a material link with exoplanetary systems.
Interstellar
visitors in the Solar System cover the whole range of sizes – from
kilometer large objects down to submicron particles. Also, interstellar
dust and meteoroids carry with them valuable information from their
parent systems. Detection of these objects along the continuum of sizes
is, however, not evident.
Interstellar visitors in the Solar System cover the whole range of
sizes – from kilometer large objects down to submicron particles. Also,
interstellar dust and meteoroids carry with them valuable information
from their parent systems. Detection of these objects along the
continuum of sizes is, however, not evident (see Figure).
The smallest interstellar dust particles are filtered out of the solar
system by electromagnetic forces, while the largest ones are too sparse
to obtain good statistics from in situ spacecraft detectors.
Discrimination between interstellar and interplanetary populations can
be a challenge for intermediate (0.1–1 micrometer) sizes. These can vary
widely in velocity and directionality.
The identification of interstellar meteoroids, observed in the Earth's
atmosphere as meteors, is highly challenging and requires high accuracy
measurements and appropriate error examinations.
Otherwise, measurement errors can transfer near-parabolic orbits over
the parabolic limit and create an artificial population of hyperbolic
particles, often interpreted as of interstellar origin.
Large interstellar visitors like asteroids and comets were detected the
first time in the solar system in 2017 (1I/'Oumuamua) and 2019
(2I/Borisov) and are expected to be detected more frequently with new
telescopes, e.g. the Vera Rubin Observatory. Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb have predicted that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will be capable of detecting an anisotropy in the distribution of interstellar objects due to the Sun's motion relative to the Local Standard of Rest and identify the characteristic ejection speed of interstellar objects from their parent stars.
In May 2023, astronomers reported the possible capture of other interstellar objects in Near Earth Orbit (NEO) over the years.
In July 2023, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb reported the possibility of finding interstellar material.
Path of the hyperbolic, extrasolar object ʻOumuamua, the first confirmed interstellar object, discovered in 2017
A dim object was discovered on October 19, 2017, by the Pan-STARRS
telescope, at an apparent magnitude of 20. The observations showed that
it follows a strongly hyperbolic trajectory around the Sun at a speed
greater than the solar escape velocity, in turn meaning that it is not
gravitationally bound to the Solar System and likely to be an
interstellar object.
It was initially named C/2017 U1 because it was assumed to be a comet,
and was renamed to A/2017 U1 after no cometary activity was found on
October 25.
After its interstellar nature was confirmed, it was renamed to
1I/ʻOumuamua – "1" because it is the first such object to be discovered,
"I" for interstellar, and "‘Oumuamua" is a Hawaiian word meaning "a
messenger from afar arriving first".
The lack of cometary activity
from ʻOumuamua suggests an origin from the inner regions of whatever
stellar system it came from, losing all surface volatiles within the frost line, much like the rocky asteroids, extinct comets and damocloids
we know from the Solar System. This is only a suggestion, as ʻOumuamua
might very well have lost all surface volatiles to eons of cosmic radiation exposure in interstellar space, developing a thick crust layer after it was expelled from its parent system.
ʻOumuamua has an eccentricity
of 1.199, which was the highest eccentricity ever observed for any
object in the Solar System by a wide margin prior to the discovery of
comet 2I/Borisov in August 2019.
In September 2018, astronomers described several possible home star systems from which ʻOumuamua may have begun its interstellar journey.
The object was discovered on 30 August 2019 at MARGO, Nauchnyy, Crimea by Gennadiy Borisov using his custom-built 0.65-meter telescope. On 13 September 2019, the Gran Telescopio Canarias obtained a low-resolution visible spectrum of 2I/Borisov that revealed that this object has a surface composition not too different from that found in typical Oort Cloud comets.
The IAU Working Group for Small Body Nomenclature kept the name
Borisov, giving the comet the interstellar designation of 2I/Borisov. On 12 March 2020, astronomers reported observational evidence of "ongoing nucleus fragmentation" from Borisov.
Candidates
Comet Hyakutake (C/1996 B2) might be a former interstellar object captured by the Solar System
In November 2018, Harvard astronomers Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb
reported that there should be hundreds of 'Oumuamua-size interstellar
objects in the Solar System, based on calculated orbital
characteristics, and presented several centaur candidates such as 2017 SV13 and 2018 TL6. These are all orbiting the Sun, but may have been captured in the distant past.
Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb have proposed methods for increasing the discovery rate of interstellar objects that include stellar occultations, optical signatures from impacts with the moon or the Earth's atmosphere, and radio flares from collisions with neutron stars.
CNEOS 2014-01-08 (also known as Interstellar meteor 1; IM1), a meteor with a mass of 0.46 tons and width of 0.45 m (1.5 ft), burned up in the Earth's atmosphere on January 8, 2014. A 2019 preprint suggested this meteor had been of interstellar origin.
It had a heliocentric speed of 60 km/s (37 mi/s) and an asymptotic
speed of 42.1 ± 5.5 km/s (26.2 ± 3.4 mi/s), and it exploded at 17:05:34
UTC near Papua New Guinea at an altitude of 18.7 km (61,000 ft). After declassifying the data in April 2022, the U.S. Space Command, based on information collected from its planetary defense sensors, confirmed the velocity of the potential interstellar meteor. In 2023, The Galileo Project completed an expedition to retrieve small fragments of the apparently peculiar meteor. Claims about their findings have been doubted by their peers according to a report in The New York Times. Further related studies were reported on 1 September 2023.
Other astronomers doubt the interstellar origin because the meteoroid catalog used does not report uncertainties on the incoming velocity.
The validity of any single data point (especially for smaller
meteoroids) remains questionable. In November 2022, a paper was
published, claiming the anomalous properties (including its high
strength and strongly hyperbolic trajectory) of CNEOS 2014-01-08
are better described as measurement error rather than genuine
parameters. Successful retrieval of any meteoroid fragments is highly
unlikely. Common micrometeorites would be indistinguishable from one another.
2017 interstellar meteor
CNEOS 2017-03-09 (aka Interstellar meteor 2; IM2),
a meteor with a mass of roughly 6.3 tons, burned up in the Earth's
atmosphere on March 9, 2017. Similar to IM1, it has a high mechanical
strength.
In September 2022, astronomers Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb reported
the discovery of a candidate interstellar meteor, CNEOS 2017-03-09 (aka
Interstellar meteor 2; IM2), that impacted Earth in 2017 and is
considered, based in part on the high material strength of the meteor, to be a possible interstellar object.
Hypothetical missions
With
current space technology, close visits and orbital missions are
challenging due to their high speeds, though not impossible.
The Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) launched in 2017 Project Lyra to assess the feasibility of a mission to ʻOumuamua. Several options for sending a spacecraft to ʻOumuamua within a time-frame of 5 to 25 years were suggested. One option is using first a Jupiter flyby followed by a close solar flyby at 3 solar radii (2.1×106 km; 1.3×106 mi) in order to take advantage of the Oberth effect.
Different mission durations and their velocity requirements were
explored with respect to the launch date, assuming direct impulsive
transfer to the intercept trajectory.
The Comet Interceptor spacecraft by ESA and JAXA, planned to launch in 2029, will be positioned at the Sun-Earth L2 point to wait for a suitable long-period comet to intercept and flyby for study.
In case that no suitable comet is identified during its 3-year wait,
the spacecraft could be tasked to intercept an interstellar object in
short notice, if reachable.
It has been believed for some time that inputs from different
sensory organs are processed in different areas in the brain. The
communication within and among these specialized areas of the brain is
known as functional integration.Newer research has shown that these different regions of the brain may not be solely responsible for only one sensory modality, but could use multiple inputs to perceive what the body senses about its environment. Multisensory integration
is necessary for almost every activity that we perform because the
combination of multiple sensory inputs is essential for us to comprehend
our surroundings.
Overview
It
has been believed for some time that inputs from different sensory
organs are processed in different areas in the brain, relating to systems neuroscience.
Using functional neuroimaging, it can be seen that sensory-specific
cortices are activated by different inputs. For example, regions in the occipital cortex are tied to vision and those on the superior temporal gyrus
are recipients of auditory inputs. There exist studies suggesting
deeper multisensory convergences than those at the sensory-specific
cortices, which were listed earlier. This convergence of multiple
sensory modalities is known as multisensory integration.
Sensory processing deals with how the brain processes sensory
input from multiple sensory modalities. These include the five classic
senses of vision (sight), audition (hearing), tactile stimulation (touch), olfaction (smell), and gustation (taste). Other sensory modalities exist, for example the vestibular sense (balance and the sense of movement) and proprioception (the sense of knowing one's position in space) Along with Time
(The sense of knowing where one is in time or activities). It is
important that the information of these different sensory modalities
must be relatable. The sensory inputs themselves are in different
electrical signals, and in different contexts.
Through sensory processing, the brain can relate all sensory inputs
into a coherent percept, upon which our interaction with the environment
is ultimately based.
Basic structures involved
The different senses were always thought to be controlled by separate lobes of the brain, called projection areas. The lobes of the brain are the classifications that divide the brain both anatomically and functionally.
These lobes are the Frontal lobe, responsible for conscious thought,
Parietal lobe, responsible for visuospatial processing, the Occipital
lobe, responsible for the sense of sight, and the temporal lobe,
responsible for the senses of smell and sound. From the earliest times
of neurology, it has been thought that these lobes are solely
responsible for their one sensory modality input. However, newer research has shown that that may not entirely be the case.
Sometimes there can be a problem with the encoding of the sensory information. This disorder is known as Sensory processing disorder (SPD). This disorder can be further classified into three main types.
Sensory modulation disorder, in which patients seek sensory stimulation due to an over or under response to sensory stimuli.
Sensory based motor disorder. Patients have incorrect processing of motor information that leads to poor motor skills.
Sensory processing disorder or sensory discrimination disorder,
which is characterized by postural control problems, lack of
attentiveness, and disorganization.
There are several therapies used to treat SPD. Anna Jean Ayres
claimed that a child needs a healthy "sensory diet," which is all of
the activities that children engage in, that gives them the necessary
sensory inputs that they need to get their brain into improving sensory
processing.
History
In the 1930s, Wilder Penfield was conducting a very bizarre operation at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Penfield "pioneered the incorporation of neurophysiological principles in the practice of neurosurgery. Penfield was interested in determining a solution to solve the epileptic seizure
problems that his patients were having. He used an electrode to
stimulate different regions of the brain's cortex, and would ask his
still conscious patient what he or she felt. This process led to the
publication of his book, The Cerebral Cortex of Man. The "mapping" of
the sensations his patients felt led Penfield to chart out the
sensations that were triggered by stimulating different cortical
regions.
Mrs. H. P. Cantlie was the artist Penfield hired to illustrate his
findings. The result was the conception of the first sensory Homonculus.
The Homonculus
is a visual representation of the intensity of sensations derived from
different parts of the body. Wilder Penfield and his colleague Herbert Jasper developed the Montreal procedure
using an electrode to stimulate different parts of the brain to
determine which parts were the cause of the epilepsy. This part could
then be surgically removed or altered in order to regain optimal brain
performance. While performing these tests, they discovered that the functional maps
of the sensory and motor cortices were similar in all patients.
Because of their novelty at the time, these Homonculi were hailed as the
"E=mc² of Neuroscience".
Current research
There
are still no definitive answers to the questions regarding the
relationship between functional and structural asymmetries in the brain. There are a number of asymmetries in the human brain including how language is processed mainly in the left hemisphere of the brain.
There have been some cases, however, in which individuals have
comparable language skills to someone who uses his left hemisphere to
process language, yet they mainly use their right or both hemispheres.
These cases pose the possibility that function may not follow structure
in some cognitive tasks.
Current research in the fields of sensory processing and multisensory
integration is aiming to hopefully unlock the mysteries behind the
concept of brain lateralization.
Research on sensory processing has much to offer towards
understanding the function of the brain as a whole. The primary task of
multisensory integration is to figure out and sort out the vast
quantities of sensory information in the body through multiple sensory
modalities. These modalities not only are not independent, but they are
also quite complementary. Where one sensory modality may give
information on one part of a situation, another modality can pick up
other necessary information. Bringing this information together
facilitates the better understanding of the physical world around us.
It may seem redundant that we are being provided with multiple sensory inputs
about the same object, but that is not necessarily the case. This
so-called "redundant" information is in fact verification that what we
are experiencing is in fact happening. Perceptions
of the world are based on models that we build of the world. Sensory
information informs these models, but this information can also confuse
the models. Sensory illusions
occur when these models do not match up. For example, where our visual
system may fool us in one case, our auditory system can bring us back
to a ground reality. This prevents sensory misrepresentations, because
through the combination of multiple sensory modalities, the model that
we create is much more robust and gives a better assessment of the
situation. Thinking about it logically, it is far easier to fool one
sense than it is to simultaneously fool two or more senses.
Examples
One of the earliest sensations is the olfactory sensation. Evolutionary, gustation and olfaction
developed together. This multisensory integration was necessary for
early humans in order to ensure that they were receiving proper
nutrition from their food, and also to make sure that they were not
consuming poisonous materials.
There are several other sensory integrations that developed early on
in the human evolutionary time line. The integration between vision and
audition was necessary for spatial mapping. Integration between vision
and tactile sensations developed along with our finer motor skills
including better hand-eye coordination. While humans developed into bipedal organisms, balance became exponentially more essential to survival. The multisensory integration between visual inputs, vestibular (balance) inputs, and proprioception inputs played an important role in our development into upright walkers.
Audiovisual system
Perhaps one of the most studied sensory integrations is the relationship between vision and audition.
These two senses perceive the same objects in the world in different
ways, and by combining the two, they help us understand this information
better.
Vision dominates our perception of the world around us. This is
because visual spatial information is one of the most reliable sensory
modalities. Visual stimuli are recorded directly onto the retina, and
there are few, if any, external distortions that provide incorrect
information to the brain about the true location of an object.
Other spatial information is not as reliable as visual spatial
information. For example, consider auditory spatial input. The
location of an object can sometimes be determined solely on its sound,
but the sensory input can easily be modified or altered, thus giving a
less reliable spatial representation of the object.
Auditory information therefore is not spatially represented unlike
visual stimuli. But once one has the spatial mapping from the visual
information, multisensory integration helps bring the information from
both the visual and auditory stimuli together to make a more robust
mapping.
There have been studies done that show that a dynamic neural
mechanism exists for matching the auditory and visual inputs from an
event that stimulates multiple senses.
One example of this that has been observed is how the brain compensates
for target distance. When you are speaking with someone or watching
something happen, auditory and visual signals are not being processed
concurrently, but they are perceived as being simultaneous. This kind of multisensory integration can lead to slight misperceptions in the visual-auditory system in the form of the ventriloquism effect.
An example of the ventriloquism effect is when a person on the
television appears to have his voice coming from his mouth, rather than
the television's speakers. This occurs because of a pre-existing
spatial representation within the brain which is programmed to think
that voices come from another human's mouth. This then makes it so the
visual response to the audio input is spatially misrepresented, and
therefore misaligned.
Sensorimotor system
Hand
eye coordination is one example of sensory integration. In this case,
we require a tight integration of what we visually perceive about an
object, and what we tactilely perceive about that same object. If these
two senses were not combined within the brain, then one would have less
ability to manipulate an object. Eye–hand coordination
is the tactile sensation in the context of the visual system. The
visual system is very static, in that it does not move around much, but
the hands and other parts used in tactile sensory collection can freely
move around. This movement of the hands must be included in the mapping
of both the tactile and visual sensations, otherwise one would not be
able to comprehend where they were moving their hands, and what they
were touching and looking at. An example of this happening is looking
at an infant. The infant picks up objects and puts them in his mouth,
or touches them to his feet or face. All of these actions are
culminating to the formation of spatial maps in the brain and the
realization that "Hey, that thing that's moving this object is actually a
part of me." Seeing the same thing that they are feeling is a major
step in the mapping that is required for infants to begin to realize
that they can move their arms and interact with an object. This is the
earliest and most explicit way of experiencing sensory integration.
Further research
In
the future, research on sensory integration will be used to better
understand how different sensory modalities are incorporated within the
brain to help us perform even the simplest of tasks. For example, we do
not currently have the understanding needed to comprehend how neural
circuits transform sensory cues into changes in motor activities. More
research done on the sensorimotor system can help understand how these movements are controlled. This understanding can potentially be used to learn more about how to make better prosthetics,
and eventually help patients who have lost the use of a limb. Also, by
learning more about how different sensory inputs can combine can have
profound effects on new engineering approaches using robotics.
The robot's sensory devices may take in inputs of different
modalities, but if we understand multisensory integration better, we
might be able to program these robots to convey these data into a useful
output to better serve our purposes.
In biology, depolarization or hypopolarization is a change within a cell, during which the cell undergoes a shift in electric charge
distribution, resulting in less negative charge inside the cell
compared to the outside. Depolarization is essential to the function of
many cells, communication between cells, and the overall physiology of an organism.
Action potential in a neuron,
showing depolarization, in which the cell's internal charge becomes
less negative (more positive), and repolarization, where the internal
charge returns to a more negative value.
Most cells in higher organisms maintain an internal environment that
is negatively charged relative to the cell's exterior. This difference
in charge is called the cell's membrane potential.
In the process of depolarization, the negative internal charge of the
cell temporarily becomes more positive (less negative). This shift from a
negative to a more positive membrane potential occurs during several
processes, including an action potential.
During an action potential, the depolarization is so large that the
potential difference across the cell membrane briefly reverses polarity,
with the inside of the cell becoming positively charged.
The change in charge typically occurs due to an influx of sodiumions into a cell, although it can be mediated by an influx of any kind of cation or efflux of any kind of anion. The opposite of a depolarization is called a hyperpolarization.
Usage of the term "depolarization" in biology differs from its
use in physics, where it refers to situations in which any form of polarity ( i.e. the presence of any electrical charge, whether positive or negative) changes to a value of zero.
Depolarization is sometimes referred to as "hypopolarization" (as opposed to hyperpolarization).
Physiology
The process of depolarization is entirely dependent upon the
intrinsic electrical nature of most cells. When a cell is at rest, the
cell maintains what is known as a resting potential.
The resting potential generated by nearly all cells results in the
interior of the cell having a negative charge compared to the exterior
of the cell. To maintain this electrical imbalance, ions
are transported across the cell's plasma membrane. The transport of the
ions across the plasma membrane is accomplished through several
different types of transmembrane proteins embedded in the cell's plasma
membrane that function as pathways for ions both into and out of the
cell, such as ion channels, sodium potassium pumps, and voltage-gated ion channels.
Resting potential
The
resting potential must be established within a cell before the cell can
be depolarized. There are many mechanisms by which a cell can establish
a resting potential, however there is a typical pattern of generating
this resting potential that many cells follow. The cell uses ion
channels, ion pumps, and voltage-gated ion channels to generate a
negative resting potential within the cell. However, the process of
generating the resting potential within the cell also creates an
environment outside the cell that favors depolarization. The sodium potassium pump
is largely responsible for the optimization of conditions on both the
interior and the exterior of the cell for depolarization. By pumping
three positively charged sodium ions (Na+) out of the cell for every two positively charged potassium ions (K+) pumped into the cell, not only is the resting potential of the cell established, but an unfavorable concentration gradient
is created by increasing the concentration of sodium outside the cell
and increasing the concentration of potassium within the cell. Although
there is an excessive amount of potassium in the cell and sodium outside
the cell, the generated resting potential keeps the voltage-gated ion
channels in the plasma membrane closed, preventing the ions that have
been pumped across the plasma membrane from diffusing to an area of
lower concentration. Additionally, despite the high concentration of
positively-charged potassium ions, most cells contain internal
components (of negative charge), which accumulate to establish a
negative inner-charge.
Depolarization
Voltage-gated sodium channel. Open channel (top) carries an influx of Na+ ions, giving rise to depolarization. As the channel becomes closed/inactivated (bottom), the depolarization ends.
After a cell has established a resting potential, that cell has the
capacity to undergo depolarization. During depolarization, the membrane
potential rapidly shifts from negative to positive. For this rapid
change to take place within the interior of the cell, several events
must occur along the plasma membrane of the cell. While the
sodium–potassium pump continues to work, the voltage-gated sodium and calcium channels
that had been closed while the cell was at resting potential are opened
in response to an initial change in voltage. As the sodium ions rush
back into the cell, they add positive charge to the cell interior, and
change the membrane potential from negative to positive. Once the
interior of the cell becomes more positively charged, depolarization of
the cell is complete, and the channels close again.
Repolarization
After
a cell has been depolarized, it undergoes one final change in internal
charge. Following depolarization, the voltage-gated sodium ion channels
that had been open while the cell was undergoing depolarization close
again. The increased positive charge within the cell now causes the
potassium channels to open. Potassium ions (K+) begin to move
down the electrochemical gradient (in favor of the concentration
gradient and the newly established electrical gradient). As potassium
moves out of the cell the potential within the cell decreases and
approaches its resting potential once more. The sodium potassium pump
works continuously throughout this process.
Hyperpolarization
The process of repolarization causes an overshoot in the potential of the cell. Potassium ions continue to move out of the axon
so much so that the resting potential is exceeded and the new cell
potential becomes more negative than the resting potential. The resting
potential is ultimately re-established by the closing of all
voltage-gated ion channels and the activity of the sodium potassium ion
pump.
Neurons
Structure of a neuron
Depolarization is essential to the functions of many cells in the
human body, which is exemplified by the transmission of stimuli both
within a neuron and between two neurons. The reception of stimuli,
neural integration of those stimuli, and the neuron's response to
stimuli all rely upon the ability of neurons to utilize depolarization
to transmit stimuli either within a neuron or between neurons.
Response to stimulus
Stimuli
to neurons can be physical, electrical, or chemical, and can either
inhibit or excite the neuron being stimulated. An inhibitory stimulus is
transmitted to the dendrite of a neuron, causing hyperpolarization
of the neuron. The hyperpolarization following an inhibitory stimulus
causes a further decrease in voltage within the neuron below the resting
potential. By hyperpolarizing a neuron, an inhibitory stimulus results
in a greater negative charge that must be overcome for depolarization to
occur. Excitation stimuli, on the other hand, increases the voltage in
the neuron, which leads to a neuron that is easier to depolarize than
the same neuron in the resting state. Regardless of it being excitatory
or inhibitory, the stimulus travels down the dendrites of a neuron to
the cell body for integration.
Once the stimuli have reached the cell body, the nerve must integrate
the various stimuli before the nerve can respond. The stimuli that have
traveled down the dendrites converge at the axon hillock, where they are summed to determine the neuronal response. If the sum of the stimuli reaches a certain voltage, known as the threshold potential, depolarization continues from the axon hillock down the axon.
Response
The surge of depolarization traveling from the axon hillock to the axon terminal is known as an action potential. Action potentials reach the axon terminal, where the action potential triggers the release of neurotransmitters
from the neuron. The neurotransmitters that are released from the axon
continue on to stimulate other cells such as other neurons or muscle
cells. After an action potential
travels down the axon of a neuron, the resting membrane potential of
the axon must be restored before another action potential can travel the
axon. This is known as the recovery period of the neuron, during which
the neuron cannot transmit another action potential.
Rod cells of the eye
The importance and versatility of depolarization within cells can be seen in the relationship between rod cells
in the eye and their associated neurons. When rod cells are in the
dark, they are depolarized. In the rod cells, this depolarization is
maintained by ion channels that remain open due to the higher voltage of
the rod cell in the depolarized state. The ion channels allow calcium
and sodium to pass freely into the cell, maintaining the depolarized
state. Rod cells in the depolarized state constantly release
neurotransmitters which in turn stimulate the nerves associated with rod
cells. This cycle is broken when rod cells are exposed to light; the
absorption of light by the rod cell causes the channels that had
facilitated the entry of sodium and calcium into the rod cell to close.
When these channels close, the rod cells produce fewer
neurotransmitters, which is perceived by the brain as an increase in
light. Therefore, in the case of rod cells and their associated neurons,
depolarization actually prevents a signal from reaching the brain as
opposed to stimulating the transmission of the signal.[7][page needed]
Vascular endothelium
Endothelium
is a thin layer of simple squamous epithelial cells that line the
interior of both blood and lymph vessels. The endothelium that lines
blood vessels is known as vascular endothelium, which is subject to and
must withstand the forces of blood flow and blood pressure from the
cardiovascular system. To withstand these cardiovascular forces,
endothelial cells must simultaneously have a structure capable of
withstanding the forces of circulation while also maintaining a certain
level of plasticity in the strength of their structure. This plasticity
in the structural strength of the vascular endothelium is essential to
overall function of the cardiovascular system. Endothelial cells within
blood vessels can alter the strength of their structure to maintain the
vascular tone of the blood vessel they line, prevent vascular rigidity,
and even help to regulate blood pressure within the cardiovascular
system. Endothelial cells accomplish these feats by using depolarization
to alter their structural strength. When an endothelial cell undergoes
depolarization, the result is a marked decrease in the rigidity and
structural strength of the cell by altering the network of fibers that
provide these cells with their structural support. Depolarization in
vascular endothelium is essential not only to the structural integrity
of endothelial cells, but also to the ability of the vascular
endothelium to aid in the regulation of vascular tone, prevention of
vascular rigidity, and the regulation of blood pressure.
Heart
Electrocardiogram
Depolarization occurs in the four chambers of the heart: both atria first, and then both ventricles.
The sinoatrial (SA) node on the wall of the right atrium
initiates depolarization in the right and left atria, causing
contraction, which corresponds to the P wave on an electrocardiogram.
The SA node sends the depolarization wave to the atrioventricular
(AV) node which—with about a 100 ms delay to let the atria finish
contracting—then causes contraction in both ventricles, seen in the QRS
wave. At the same time, the atria re-polarize and relax.
The ventricles are re-polarized and relaxed at the T wave.
This process continues regularly, unless there is a problem in the heart.
The
common carotid arteries are present on the left and right sides of the
body. These arteries originate from different arteries but follow
symmetrical courses. The right common carotid originates in the neck
from the brachiocephalic trunk; the left from the aortic arch in the thorax. These split into the external and internal carotid arteries at the upper border of the thyroid cartilage, at around the level of the fourth cervical vertebra.
The left common carotid artery can be thought of as having two
parts: a thoracic (chest) part and a cervical (neck) part. The right
common carotid originates in or close to the neck and contains only a
small thoracic portion. There are studies in the bioengineering
literature that have looked into characterizing the geometric structure
of the common carotid artery from both qualitative and mathematical
(quantitative) standpoints.
The average diameters of the common carotids in adult males and females are 6.5 mm and 6.1 mm respectively.
In the chest
Only
the left common carotid artery has a substantial presence in the
thorax. It originates directly from the aortic arch, and travels upward
through the superior mediastinum to the level of the left sternoclavicular joint.
To its right side below is the brachiocephalic trunk, and above, the trachea, the inferior thyroid veins, and the remains of the thymus; to its left side are the left vagus and phrenic nerves, left pleura, and lung. The left subclavian artery is posterior and slightly lateral to it.
The cervical portions of the common carotids resemble each other so closely that one description will apply to both.
Each vessel passes obliquely upward, from behind the
sternoclavicular joint to the level of the upper border of the thyroid
cartilage, where it divides.
At the lower neck the two common carotid arteries are separated
from each other by a very narrow interval which contains the trachea;
but at the upper part, the thyroid gland, the larynx and pharynx separate the two arteries.
The common carotid artery is contained in a sheath known as the carotid sheath, which is derived from the deep cervical fascia and encloses also the internal jugular vein and vagus nerve,
the vein lying lateral to the artery, and the nerve between the artery
and vein, on a plane posterior to both. On opening the sheath, each of
these three structures is seen to have a separate fibrous cover.
At approximately the level of the fourth cervical vertebra, the common carotid artery splits ("bifurcates" in literature) into an internal carotid artery (ICA) and an external carotid artery
(ECA). While both branches travel upward, the internal carotid takes a
deeper (more internal) path, eventually travelling up into the skull to
supply the brain.
The external carotid artery travels more closely to the surface, and
sends off numerous branches that supply the neck and face.
Superficial dissection of the right side of the neck, showing the carotid and subclavian arteries
At the lower part of the neck the common carotid artery is very deeply seated, being covered by the integument, superficial fascia, the platysma muscle, deep cervical fascia, the sternocleidomastoid muscle, the sternohyoid, sternothyroid, and the omohyoid;
in the upper part of its course it is more superficial, being covered
merely by the integument, the superficial fascia, the platysma, deep
cervical fascia, and medial margin of the sternocleidomastoid.
When the sternocleidomastoid muscle is drawn backward, the artery is seen to be contained in a triangular space known as the carotid triangle. This space is bounded behind by the sternocleidomastoid, above by the stylohyoid and the posterior belly of the digastric muscle, and below by the superior belly of the omohyoid.
This part of the artery is crossed obliquely, from its medial to its lateral side, by the sternocleidomastoid branch of the superior thyroid artery; it is also crossed by the superior and middle thyroid veins (which end in the internal jugular vein); descending in front of its sheath is the descending branch of the hypoglossal nerve, this filament being joined by one or two branches from the cervical nerves, which cross the vessel obliquely.
Sometimes the descending branch of the hypoglossal nerve is contained within the sheath.
Behind, the artery is separated from the transverse processes of the cervical vertebrae by the longus colli and longus capitis muscles, the sympathetic trunk being interposed between it and the muscles. The inferior thyroid artery crosses behind the lower part of the vessel.
Medially, it is in relation with the esophagus, trachea, and thyroid gland (which overlaps it), the inferior thyroid artery and recurrent laryngeal nerve being interposed; higher up, with the larynx and pharynx. Lateral to the artery, inside the carotid sheath with the common carotid, are the internal jugular vein and vagus nerve.
At the lower part of the neck, on the right side of the body, the right recurrent laryngeal nerve crosses obliquely behind the artery; the right internal jugular vein
diverges from the artery. On the left side, however, the left internal
jugular vein approaches and often overlaps the lower part of the artery.
Behind the angle of bifurcation of the common carotid artery is a reddish-brown oval body known as the carotid body. It is similar in structure to the coccygeal body which is situated on the median sacral artery.
The relations of the cervical region of the common carotid artery may be discussed in two points:
Internal relations of organs present inside the carotid sheath
The right common carotid may rise above the level of the upper border of the sternoclavicular joint; this variation occurs in about 12 percent of cases.
In other cases, the artery on the right side may arise as a
separate branch from the arch of the aorta, or in conjunction with the
left carotid.
The left common carotid varies in its origin more than the right.
In the majority of abnormal cases it arises with the brachiocephalic trunk; if that artery is absent, the two carotids arise usually by a single trunk.
In the majority of abnormal cases, the bifurcation occurs higher than usual, the artery dividing opposite or even above the hyoid bone; more rarely, it occurs below, opposite the middle of the larynx, or the lower border of the cricoid cartilage. In at least one reported case, the artery was only 4 cm in length and divided at the root of the neck.
Very rarely, the common carotid artery ascends in the neck
without any subdivision, either the external or the internal carotid
being absent; and in a few cases the common carotid has itself been
found to be absent, the external and internal carotids arising directly
from the arch of the aorta.
This peculiarity existed on both sides in some instances, on one side in others.
The common carotid artery is often used in measuring the pulse, especially in patients who are in shock
and who lack a detectable pulse in the more peripheral arteries of the
body. The pulse is taken by palpating the artery just deep to the
anterior border of the sternocleidomastoid muscle at the level of the
superior border of the thyroid cartilage.
Presence of a carotid pulse has been estimated to indicate a systolic blood pressure of more than 40 mmHg, as given by the 50% percentile.
Carotidynia is a syndrome marked by soreness of the carotid artery near the bifurcation.
Before the unification of Nepal, the Kathmandu Valley was known as Nepal. The precise origin of the term Nepāl is uncertain. Nepal appears in ancient Indian literary texts dated as far back as the fourth century BC.
An absolute chronology can not be established, as even the oldest texts
may contain anonymous contributions dating as late as the early modern period.
Academic attempts to provide a plausible theory are hindered by the
lack of a complete picture of history and insufficient understanding of
linguistics or relevant Indo-European and Tibeto-Burman languages.
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 Nepāl Mahātmya, Nemi was charged with protection of the country by Pashupati. According to Buddhist mythology, ManjushriBodhisattva drained a primordial lake of serpents to create the Nepal valley and proclaimed that Adi-BuddhaNe 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 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 indologistChristian Lassen had proposed that Nepāla was a compound of Nipa (foot of a mountain) and -ala (short suffix for alaya meaning abode), and so Nepāla meant "abode at the foot of the mountain". He considered Ne Muni to be a fabrication. Indologist Sylvain Levi found Lassen's theory untenable but had no theories of his own, only suggesting that either Newara is a vulgarism of sanskriticNepala, or Nepala is Sanskritisation of the local ethnic; his view has found some support though it does not answer the question of etymology. It has also been proposed that Nepa is a Tibeto-Burman stem consisting of Ne (cattle) and Pa (keeper), reflecting the fact that early inhabitants of the valley were Gopalas (cowherds) and Mahispalas (buffalo-herds). Suniti Kumar Chatterji believed Nepal originated from Tibeto-Burman roots – Ne, of uncertain meaning (as multiple possibilities exist), and pala or bal, whose meaning is lost entirely.
This painting in a Laotian temple depicts a legend surrounding the birth of Gautama Buddha c. 563 BC in Lumbini, Western Nepal.
In the premises of the Changu Narayan Temple, is a stone inscription dated 464 AD, the first in Nepal since the Ashoka inscription of Lumbini (c. 250 BC).
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. The oldest discovered archaeological evidence of human settlements in Nepal dates to around the same time.
After 6500 BC, evidence for the domestication of food crops and
animals, construction of permanent structures, and storage of
agricultural surplus appeared in Mehrgarh and other sites in what is now Balochistan. These gradually developed into the Indus Valley civilisation, the first urban culture in South Asia. Prehistoric sites of palaeolithic, mesolithic and neolithic origins have been discovered in the Siwalik hills of Dang district. The earliest inhabitants of modern Nepal and adjoining areas are believed to be people from the Indus Valley civilisation. It is possible that the Dravidian people whose history predates the onset of the Bronze Age
in the Indian subcontinent (around 6300 BC) inhabited the area before
the arrival of other ethnic groups like the Tibeto-Burmans and Indo-Aryans from across the border.
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. Stella Kramrisch
(1964) mentions 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 in the post-Vedic AtharvashirshaUpanishad. 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 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, that extended down to the Ganges, and 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 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 c.
400 AD. The Lichchhavis built monuments and left a series of
inscriptions; Nepal's history of the period is pieced together almost
entirely from them. In 641, Songtsen Gampo of the Tibetan Empire sends Narendradeva back to Licchavi with an army and subjugates Nepal. Parts of Nepal and Licchavi was 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 that is often called the
dark period.
Patan Durbar Square,
one of the three palace squares in the Kathmandu Valley, was built by
the Mallas in the 17th century. The Durbar Squares are a culmination of
over a millennium of development in Nepali art and architecture.
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 North-east India.
In south-eastern 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 make 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 late 14th century as Tirhut
went into decline. In the late 14th century, Jayasthiti Malla
introduced widespread socio-economic reforms, principal of which was
the caste system. By dividing the indigenous non-Aryan Buddhist
population into castes modelled after the four Varna system
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 in 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 (Baisi)
states and, to their east in west-central Nepal, 24 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.
Unification, expansion and consolidation (1768–1951)
During Bhimsen Thapa's premiership Nepal reached its zenith
Jung Bahadur Rana, who established the autocratic Rana regime in 1846 and instituted a pro-British foreign policy
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 to 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 Nepali to retreat to their own 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 Nepali 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 and
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 (known as Naya Muluk, new country). In 1923, the United Kingdom and Nepal formally signed an agreement of friendship that superseded the Sugauli Treaty of 1816.[56]
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. Rana rule was marked by tyranny, debauchery, economic exploitation and religious persecution.
Contemporary history
In the late 1940s, newly emerging pro-democracy movements and
political parties in Nepal were critical of the Rana autocracy.
Following the success of Indian Independence Movement which Nepalese
activists had taken part in, with India's support and cooperation of
King Tribhuvan, Nepali Congress
was successful in toppling the Rana regime, establishing a
parliamentary democracy. After a decade of power wrangling between the
king and the government, King Mahendra (ruled 1955–1972) scrapped the democratic experiment in 1960, and a "partyless" Panchayat system was made to govern Nepal. The political parties were banned and politicians 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 (ruled 1972–2001) 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 death 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 28 May 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 is of roughly trapezoidal shape, about 800 kilometres (500 mi)
long and 200 kilometres (120 mi) wide, with an area of 147,516 km2 (56,956 sq mi). It lies between latitudes 26° and 31°N, and longitudes 80° and 89°E.
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 south-west, and later, south and south-east. Simultaneously, the vast Tethynoceanic 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 under-thrust Eurasia and to uplift the Himalayas.
The rising barriers blocked the paths of rivers creating 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 which 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
(1,500 mi)-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.
Mount Everest, the highest peak on earth, lies on the Nepal–China border.
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 metres (29,032 ft)
height Mount Everest (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 metres (2,600 to 13,100 ft) in
altitude, with progression from subtropical climates below 1,200 metres
(3,900 ft) to alpine climates above 3,600 metres (11,800 ft). The Lower Himalayan Range,
reaching 1,500 to 3,000 metres (4,900 to 9,800 ft), 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 above 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) and very low
above 2,500 metres (8,200 ft), where snow occasionally falls in winter.
The southern lowland plains or 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 Sivalik Hills
or Churia Range, cresting at 700 to 1,000 metres (2,300 to 3,280 ft),
marks the limits of the Gangetic Plain. Broad, low valleys called Inner Terai Valleys (Bhitri Tarai Upatyaka) lie north of these foothills in several places.
Köppen climate classification for Nepal
The Indian plate continues to move north relative to Asia at about 50 mm (2.0 in) per year.
This makes Nepal an earthquake-prone zone, and periodic earthquakes
that have devastating consequences present a significant hurdle to
development. Erosion of the Himalayas is a very important source of sediment, which flows to the Indian Ocean. Saptakoshi, in particular, carries a huge amount of silt out of Nepal but sees 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 has five climatic zones, broadly corresponding to the
altitudes. The tropical and subtropical zones lie below 1,200 metres
(3,900 ft), the temperate
zone 1,200 to 2,400 metres (3,900 to 7,900 ft), the cold zone 2,400 to
3,600 metres (7,900 to 11,800 ft), the subarctic zone 3,600 to 4,400
metres (11,800 to 14,400 ft), and the Arctic zone above 4,400 metres
(14,400 ft). Nepal experiences five seasons: summer, monsoon,
autumn, winter and spring. The Himalayas block cold winds from Central
Asia in the winter and form the northern limits of the monsoon wind
patterns.
This land cover map of Nepal using Landsat 30 m (2010) data shows forest cover as the dominant type of land cover in Nepal.
Nepal contains a disproportionately large diversity of plants and animals, relative to its size.Nepal, 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 (60 m from sea level in the Terai plains, to 8,848 m Mount Everest) result 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.
The Himalayan monal (Danphe), the national bird of Nepal, nests high in the Himalayas.
Most of the subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest of the lower Himalayan region is descended from the TethyanTertiary flora. As the Indian Plate collided with Eurasia forming and raising the Himalayas, the arid and semi-arid Mediterranean flora was pushed up and adapted to the more alpine climate over the next 40–50 million years. The Himalayan biodiversity hotspot was the site of mass exchange and intermingling of the Indian and Eurasian species in the neogene. One mammal species (Himalayan field mouse), two each of bird and reptile species, nine amphibia, eight fish and 29 butterfly species are endemic to Nepal.
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 endangeredBengal 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 endangeredgharial, the Bengal florican, and the white-rumped vulture, which has become nearly extinct by having ingested the carrion of diclofenac-treated cattle. The pervasive and ecologically devastating human encroachment of recent decades has critically endangered Nepali wildlife. In response, the system of national parks and protected areas, first established in 1973 with the enactment of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 1973, was substantially expanded. Vulture restaurants coupled with a ban on veterinary usage of diclofenac has seen a rise in the number of white-rumped vultures.The community forestry programme
which has seen a third of the country's population directly participate
in managing a quarter of the total forested area has helped the local
economies while reducing human-wildlife conflict. The breeding programmes coupled with community-assisted military patrols, and a crackdown on poaching and smuggling, has seen poaching of critically endangered tigers and elephants as well as vulnerable rhinos, among others, go down to effectively zero, and their numbers have steadily increased. Nepal has ten national parks, three wildlife reserves, one hunting reserve, three Conservation Areas and eleven buffer zones, covering a total area of 28,959.67 km2 (11,181.39 sq mi), or 19.67% of the total land area, while ten wetlands are registered under the Ramsar Convention.
Nepal is a parliamentary republic with a multi-party system.
Nepal used to be referred as 'Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal'
until Nepal Government decided to use just 'Nepal' as official name of
the country. It has seven national political parties recognised in the federal parliament: Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), Nepali Congress, Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), Rastriya Swatantra Party, Rastriya Prajatantra Party, People's Socialist Party and Janamat Party.
Of the two major parties which both officially espouse democratic
socialism, CPN(UML) is considered leftist while Nepali Congress is
considered centrist.
During most of the brief periods of democratic exercise in the 1950s
and the 1990s, Nepali Congress held majority of seats in parliament; CPN (UML) was its competitor in the 1990s. After the Maoists entered the political process in 2006, they emerged as the third largest party. In the aftermath of the 2017 elections,
the first one according to the new constitution, NCP, formed by the
merger of CPN (UML) and CPN (Maoist Centre) had become the ruling party
at the federal level and in six out of seven provinces. After the 2022 general election, the House of Representatives of 2nd Federal parliament was formed as hung parliament and a coalition government led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal was formed in December 2022.
B.P. Koirala
led the 1951 revolution, became the first democratically elected Prime
Minister, and after being deposed and imprisoned in 1961, spent the rest
of his life fighting for democracy.
In the 1930s, a vibrant underground political movement arose in the capital, birthing Nepal Praja Parishad in 1936, which was dissolved seven years later, following the execution of the four great martyrs. Around the same time, Nepalis involved in the Indian independence movement started organizing into political parties, leading to the birth of Nepali Congress and Communist Party of Nepal. As communism was trying to find its footing, Nepali Congress was successful in overthrowing the Rana regime in 1951 and enjoyed the overwhelming support of the electorate. In the partyless Panchayat system initiated in 1962 by King Mahendra, monarchy loyalists took turns leading the government; political leaders remained underground, exiled or in prison.
A communist insurgency was crushed in its cradle in the 1970s, which
led to the eventual coalescence of hitherto scattered communist factions
under the United Left Front.
After the joint civil resistance launched by the United Left Front and Nepali Congress overthrew the Panchayat in 1990, the Front became CPN (UML),
adopted multi-party democracy, and in the brief period, it was in
government, introduced welfare programmes that remain popular. After the Maoist Party joined mainstream politics, in the aftermath of the peaceful revolution of 2006,
it also adopted multi-party democracy as its official line. The
transition period between 2006 and 2015 saw sustained protests from the
newly formed ethnocentric nationalist movements, principal among them
the Madhes Movement.
Nepal is governed according to the Constitution of Nepal.
It defines Nepal as having multi-ethnic, multi-lingual,
multi-religious, multi-cultural characteristics with common aspirations
of people living in diverse geographical regions, and being committed to
and united by a bond of allegiance to the national independence,
territorial integrity, national interest, and prosperity of Nepal.
Executive:
The form of governance is a multi-party, competitive, federal
democratic republican parliamentary system based on plurality. The
President appoints the parliamentary party leader of the political party
with the majority in the House of Representatives as Prime Minister,
who forms the Council of ministers that exercises the executive power.
Legislature:
The Legislature of Nepal, called the Federal Parliament, consists of
the House of Representatives and the National Assembly. The House of
Representatives consists of 275 members elected through a mixed electoral system
and has a term of five years. The National Assembly, consisting of 59
members elected by provincial electoral colleges, is a permanent house; a
third of its members are elected every two years for a six-year term.
Judiciary:
Nepal has a unitary three-tier independent judiciary that comprises the
Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, headed by the Chief Justice,
seven High Courts, one in each province, the highest court at the
provincial level, and 77 district courts, one in each district. The
municipal councils can convene local judicial bodies to resolve disputes
and render non-binding verdicts in cases not involving actionable
crime. The actions and proceedings of the local judicial bodies may be
guided and countermanded by the district courts.
Nepal is a federal republic comprising 7 provinces.
Each province is composed of 8 to 14 districts. The districts, in turn,
comprise local units known as urban and rural municipalities.
There is a total of 753 local units which includes 6 metropolitan
municipalities, 11 sub-metropolitan municipalities and 276
municipalities for a total of 293 urban municipalities, and 460 rural
municipalities. Each local unit is composed of wards. There are 6,743 wards in total.
The local governments enjoy executive and legislative as well as
limited judicial powers in their local jurisdiction. The provinces have
unicameral parliamentary Westminster system of governance. The local and
provincial governments exercise some absolute powers and some powers
shared with provincial or federal government. The district coordination
committee, a committee composed of all elected officials from the local
governments in the district, has a very limited role.
Nepal has made progress with regard to minority rights in recent years.
The Constitution of Nepal
is the supreme law of the land, and any other laws contradicting it are
automatically invalid to the extent of the contradiction.
The specific legal provisions are codified as Civil Code and Criminal
Code, accompanied by Civil Procedure Code and Criminal Procedure Code
respectively.
The Supreme Court is the highest authority in the interpretation of
laws and it can direct the parliament to amend or enact new laws as
required. Nepali laws are considered generally more progressive compared
to other developing countries, and in some instances, many developed
ones. The death penalty has been abolished. Nepal also has made progress in LGBT rights and gender equality.
It recognises marital rape and supports abortion rights. Owing to a
rise in sex-selective abortion, however, constraints have been
introduced. Nepal is a signatory to the Geneva Convention, Conventions/Treaties on the prohibition of Biological, Chemical and Nuclear weapons, International Labour Organization Fundamental Conventions, Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Paris climate accord.
Some legal provisions, guided by socio-economic, cultural and religious
sensibilities, remain discriminatory. There is gender-based
discrimination against foreign nationals married to Nepali citizens. Paternal lineage of a person is valued and required in legal documents. Many laws remain unenforced in practice.
Traffic Police personnel manually direct traffic at the busiest roads and junctions.
Nepal Police is the primary law enforcement agency. It is an independent organisation under the command of the Inspector General, who is appointed by and reports to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
In addition to maintaining law and order, it is responsible for the
management of road traffic, which is undertaken by Nepal Traffic Police.
Nepal Armed Police Force,
a separate paramilitary police organisation, works in cooperation with
Nepal police in routine security matters; it is intended for crowd
control, counter-insurgency and anti-terrorism actions, and other
internal matters where the use of force may be necessary. The Crime Investigation Department of Nepal Police specialises in criminal investigation and forensic analysis. The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority
is an independent investigative agency that investigates and prosecutes
cases related to corruption, bribery and abuses of authority. At 2.16
per 100,000 in 2016, Nepal's intentional homicide rate is much lower
than average; police data indicates a steady increase in the crime rate
in recent years. Nepal was ranked 76 out of 163 countries in the Global Peace Index (GPI) in 2019.
Nepal depends on diplomacy for national defence. It maintains a
policy of neutrality between its neighbours, has amicable relations with
other countries in the region, and has a policy of non-alignment at the
global stage. Nepal is a member of SAARC, UN, WTO, BIMSTEC and ACD, among others. It has bilateral diplomatic relations with 167 countries and the EU, has embassies in 30 countries and six consulates, while 25 countries maintain embassies in Nepal, and more than 80 others maintain non-residential diplomatic missions. Nepal is one of the major contributors to the UN peacekeeping missions, having contributed more than 119,000 personnel to 42 missions since 1958.
Nepali people have a reputation for honesty, loyalty and bravery, which
has led to them serving as legendary Gurkha warriors in the Indian and
British armies for the last 200 years, with service in both world wars,
India-Pakistan wars as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, though Nepal was not directly involved in any of those conflicts, and winning the highest military awards, including the Victoria Cross and the Param Vir Chakra.
Nepal is one of the major contributors to UN peacekeeping missions.
Nepal pursues a policy of "balanced relations" with the two giant immediate neighbours, India and China; the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship with India provides for a much closer relationship.
Nepal and India share an open border with free movement of people,
religious, cultural and marital ties. India is Nepal's largest trading
partner, which it depends upon for all of its oil and gas, and a number
of essential goods. Nepalis can own property in India, while Indians are
free to live and work in Nepal. Relations between India and Nepal, though very close, have faced difficulties stemming from territorial disputes, economics, and the problems inherent in big power-small power relations. Nepal established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China on 1 August 1955, and signed the Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1960; relations since have been based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. Nepal maintains neutrality in conflicts between China and India. It remains firmly committed to the One China Policy and is known to curb anti-China activities from the Tibetan refugees in Nepal. Citizens of both countries can cross the border and travel as far as 30 km without a visa.
China is viewed favourably in Nepal owing to the absence of any border
disputes or serious interference in internal politics, coupled with its
assistance in infrastructure development and aid during emergencies;
favourability has increased since China helped Nepal during the 2015 economic blockade imposed by India. Subsequently, China granted Nepal access to its ports for third-country trade, and Nepal joined China's Belt and Road Initiative.
Nepal emphasises greater cooperation in South Asia and actively pushed for the establishment of SAARC, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, the permanent secretariat of which, is hosted in Kathmandu.
Nepal was one of the first countries to recognise an independent
Bangladesh, and the two countries seek to enhance greater cooperation,
on trade and water management; seaports in Bangladesh, being closer, are
seen as viable alternatives to India's monopoly on Nepal's
third-country trade.
Nepal was the first South Asian country to establish diplomatic
relations with Israel, and the countries enjoy a strong relationship;
it recognises the rights of the Palestinians, having voted in favour of
its recognition at the UN and against the recognition of Jerusalem as
Israel's capital.
Countries that Nepal maintains a close relationship with, include the
most generous donors and development partners—the United States, the
United Kingdom, Denmark, Japan and Norway, among others.
The multipurpose Kukri
knife (top) is the signature weapon of the Nepali armed forces, and is
used by the Gurkhas, Nepal Army, Police and even security guards.
The President is the supreme commander of the Nepali Army; its routine management is handled by the Ministry of Defence. The military expenditure for 2018 was $398.5 million, around 1.4% of GDP. An almost exclusively ground infantry force, Nepal Army numbers at less than one hundred thousand; recruitment is voluntary. It has few aircraft, mainly helicopters, primarily used for transport, patrol, and search and rescue. Directorate of Military Intelligence under Nepal Army serves as the military intelligence agency; National Investigation Department tasked with national and international intelligence gathering, is independent.
Nepal Army is primarily used for routine security of critical assets,
an anti-poaching patrol of national parks, counterinsurgency, and search
and rescue during natural disasters; it also undertakes major construction projects. There are no discriminatory policies on recruitment into the army, but it is dominated by men from elite Pahari warrior castes.
A proportional representation of Nepal exports, 2019
Nepal is a developing country, which ranks 165th in the world in nominal GDP per capita and 162nd in GDP per capita at PPP. Nepal's gross domestic product (GDP) for 2019 was $34.186 billion.With an annual growth rate calculated at 6.6% in 2019, and expected 2.89% in 2021, Nepal is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Nepal has been a member of WTO since 23 April 2004.
The 16.8-million-worker Nepali labour force is the 37th largest in the world. The primary sector makes up 27.59% of GDP, the secondary sector 14.6%, and the tertiary sector 57.81%. Nepal's foreign exchange remittances of US$8.1 billion in 2018, the 19th largest in the world and constituting 28.0% of GDP,
were contributed to its economy by millions of workers primarily in
India, the Middle East and East Asia, almost all of them unskilled
labourers.Major agricultural products include cereals (barley, maize, millet,
paddy and wheat), oilseed, potato, pulses, sugarcane, jute, tobacco,
milk and water buffalo meat.Major industries include tourism, carpets, textiles, cigarettes,
cement, brick, as well as small rice, jute, sugar and oilseed mills.
Nepal's international trade greatly expanded in 1951 with the
establishment of democracy; liberalisation began in 1985 and picked up
pace after 1990. By the fiscal year 2016/17, Nepal's foreign trade
amounted Rs 1.06 trillion, a twenty-three folds increase from Rs
45.6 billion in 1990/91. More than 60% of Nepal's trade is with India.
Major exports include readymade garment, carpet, pulses, handicrafts,
leather, medicinal herbs, and paper products, which account for 90% of
the total. Major imports include various finished and semi-finished
goods, raw materials, machinery and equipment, chemical fertilisers,
electrical and electronic devices, petroleum products, gold, and
readymade garments. Inflation was at 4.5% in 2019. Foreign exchange reserves were at US$9.5 billion in July 2019, equivalent to 7.8 months of imports.
Real GDP per capita development of Nepal
Nepal has made significant progress in poverty reduction bringing the
population below the international poverty line (US$1.90 per person per
day) from 15% in 2010 to just 9.3% in 2018, although vulnerability
remains extremely high, with almost 32% of the population living on
between US$1.90 and US$3.20 per person per day.
Nepal has made improvement in sectors like nutrition, child mortality,
electricity, improved flooring and assets. Under the current trend,
Nepal is expected to eradicate poverty within 20 years. The agriculture sector is particularly vulnerable as it is highly
dependent on the monsoon rains, with just 28% of the arable land being
irrigated, As of 2014. Agriculture employs 76% of the workforce, services 18%, and manufacturing and craft-based industry 6%. Private investment, consumption, tourism and agriculture are the principal contributors to economic growth.
The government's budget is about $13.71 billion (FY 2019/20); expenditure of infrastructure development budget, most of it contributed by foreign aid, usually fails to meet the target. The country receives foreign aid from the UK, India, Japan, the US, the EU, China, Switzerland, and Scandinavian countries. The Nepali rupee has been tied to the Indian rupee at an exchange rate of 1.6 for many years. Per capita income is $1,004. The distribution of wealth
among the Nepalis is consistent with that in many developed and
developing countries: the highest 10% of households control 39.1% of the
national wealth and the lowest 10% control only 2.6%. European Union
(EU) (46.13%), the US (17.4%), and Germany (7.1%) are its main export
partners; they mainly buy Nepali ready-made garments (RMG).
Nepal's import partners include India (47.5%), the United Arab Emirates
(11.2%), China (10.7%), Saudi Arabia (4.9%), and Singapore (4%).
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 as enslaved, by The Global Slavery Index in 2016.
In 2022, Nepal limited import of non-essential goods after its
foreign currency reserves dropped. COVID-19 pandemic caused a decline in
tourism spending and the money sent home by Nepalis working abroad,
which in turn lowered country's foreign currency reserve.
Tourism
Tourists view a greater one-horned rhinoceros from an elephant in Chitwan National Park.
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.
The number of international visitors crossed one million in 2018 for
the first time (not counting Indian tourists arriving by land).
Nepal's share of visitors to South Asia is about 6%, and they spend
much less on average, with Nepal sharing 1.7% of the earnings.
Premier destinations include Pokhara, the Annapurna trekking circuit
and the four UNESCO world heritage sites—Lumbini, Sagarmatha National
Park (home to Mount Everest), seven sites in the Kathmandu Valley
collectively listed as one, and Chitwan National Park. Most of Nepal's
mountaineering earning comes from Mount Everest, which is more
accessible from the Nepalese side.
Nepal, officially opened to westerners in 1951, became a popular destination at the end of the hippie trail,
during the 1960s and 1970s. The industry, disrupted by the civil war in
the 1990s, has since recovered but faces challenges to growth, owing to
a lack of proper facilities for high-end tourism termed the
"infrastructure bottleneck", the flag carrier in shambles, and a handful
of destinations properly developed and marketed. The home-stay tourism,
in which cultural and eco-tourists stay as paying guests in the homes
of indigenous people, has seen some success.
Foreign employment
While adults are employed in slavery-like conditions abroad, hundreds of thousands of children in the country are employed as child labour (not including the agricultural sector).
The rate of unemployment and underemployment exceeds half of the working-age population,
driving millions to seek employment abroad, mainly in India, the Gulf,
and East Asia. Mostly unskilled, uneducated, and indebted to loan
sharks, these workers are swindled by the manpower companies and sent to
exploitative employers or war-ridden countries under fraudulent
contracts.
They have their passports seized, to be returned when the employer
grants them leave or terminates their contracts. Most do not get paid
minimum wage, and many are forced to forfeit all or part of the wages. Many Nepalis work in extremely unsafe conditions; an average of two workers die each day.
Due to restrictions placed on women, many depend on traffickers to get
out of the country, and end up victims of violence and abuse.
Many Nepalese are believed to be working under slavery-like conditions,
and Nepal spends billions of rupees rescuing stranded workers, on
remuneration to the indebted families of the dead, and in legal costs
for those arrested in foreign countries.
Though millions have raised themselves out of poverty, due to a lack of
entrepreneurial skills, the remittance is largely spent on real estate
and consumption.
Infrastructure
Energy
Middle Marsyangdi Hydroelectric Dam. Nepal has significant potential to generate hydropower, which it plans to export across South Asia.
The bulk of energy in Nepal comes from biomass (80%) and imported fossil fuels (16%).
Most of the final energy consumption goes to the residential sector
(84%) followed by transport (7%) and industry (6%); the transport and
industry sectors have been expanding rapidly in recent years. Except for some lignite deposits, Nepal has no known oil, gas or coal deposits. All commercial fossil fuels (mainly oil, LPG and coal) are imported, spending 129% of the country's total export revenue. Only about 1% of the energy need is fulfilled by electricity.
The perennial nature of Nepali rivers and the steep gradient of the
country's topography provide ideal conditions for the development of
hydroelectric projects. Estimates put Nepal's economically feasible
hydro-power potential at approximately 42,000 MW.
Nepal has been able to exploit only about 1,100 MW. As most of it is
generated from run-of-river (ROR) plants, the actual power produced is
much lower in the dry winter months when peak demand can reach as high
as 1,200 MW, and Nepal needs to import as much as 650 MW from India to
meet the demands. Major hydro-power projects suffer delays and setbacks.
Nepal's electrification rate (76%) is comparable to that of other
countries in the region but there is significant disparity between the
rural (72%) and urban (97%) areas.
The position of the power sector remains unsatisfactory because of high
tariffs, high system losses, high generation costs, high overheads,
over staffing, and lower domestic demand.
Transportation
Nepal remains isolated from the world's major land, air and sea
transport routes, although, within the country, aviation is in a better
state, with 47 airports, 11 of them with paved runways;
flights are frequent and support a sizeable traffic. The hilly and
mountainous terrain in the northern two-thirds of the country has made
the building of roads and other infrastructure difficult and expensive.
As of 2016, there were just over 11,890 km (7,388 mi) of paved roads,
16,100 km (10,004 mi) of unpaved roads, and just 59 km (37 mi) of
railway line in the south. As of 2018, all district headquarters (except Simikot) had been connected to the road network. Most of the rural roads are not operable during the rainy season; even national highways regularly become inoperable.
Nepal depends almost entirely on assistance from countries like China,
India and Japan, for building, maintenance and expansion of the road
network. The only practical seaport of entry for goods bound for
Kathmandu is Kolkata in India. The national carrier, Nepal Airlines, is in poor shape due to mismanagement and corruption, and has been blacklisted by the EU. Internally, the poor state of development of the road system makes access to markets, schools, and health clinics a challenge.
Communication
According to the Nepal Telecommunication Authority
MIS August 2019 report, voice telephony subscription rate was at 2.70%
of total population for fixed phones and 138.59% for mobile; 98% of all
voice telephony was through mobile phones.
Similarly, while an estimated 14.52% had access to fixed broadband, an
additional 52.71% were accessing the internet using their mobile data
subscriptions; almost 15 million of them with 3G or better. The mobile voice telephony and broadband market was dominated by two telecommunications companies, the state-owned Nepal Telecom (55%) and the private multinational, Ncell (40%).
Of the 21% market share enjoyed by fixed broadband, around 25% was
again shared by Nepal Telecom, with the rest going to the private
Internet Service Providers.
Although there is high disparity in penetration rate between the rural
and urban areas, mobile service has reached 75 districts of the country
covering 90% of land area, and broadband access is expected to reach 90%
of the population by 2020.
As of 2019, the state operates three television stations as well as
national and regional radio stations. There are 117 private TV channels
and 736 FM radio stations licensed for operation, at least 314 of them,
community radio stations.
According to the 2011 census, the percentage of households possessing
radio was 50.82%, television 36.45%, cable TV 19.33%, and computer
7.28%. According to the Press Council Nepal classification, as of 2017 of the 833 publications producing original content, ten national dailies and weeklies are rated A+ class. In 2019, Reporters Without Borders ranked Nepal at 106th in the world in terms of press freedom.
The citizens of Nepal are known as Nepali or Nepalese. The Nepali are descendants of three major migrations from India, Tibet and North Burma, and the Chinese province of Yunnan via Assam. Among the earliest inhabitants were the Kirat of the eastern region, Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, 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 a number of indigenous and folk religions in addition to
Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity.
According to the 2011 census, Nepal's population was 26.5 million,
almost a threefold increase from nine million in 1950. From 2001 to
2011, the average family size declined from 5.44 to 4.9. The census also
noted some 1.9 million absentee people, over a million more than in
2001; most are male labourers employed overseas. This correlated with
the drop in sex ratio to 94.2 from 99.8 for 2001.[234]
The annual population growth rate was 1.35% between 2001 and 2011,
compared to an average of 2.25% between 1961 and 2001; also attributed
to the absentee population.
Nepal is one of the ten least urbanised, and the ten fastest urbanizing countries in the world. As of 2014,
an estimated 18.3% of the population lived in urban areas. Urbanisation
rate is high in the Terai, doon valleys of the inner Terai and valleys
of the middle hills, but low in the high Himalayas. Similarly, the rate
is higher in central and eastern Nepal compared to further west. The capital, Kathmandu,
nicknamed the "City of temples", is the largest city in the country and
the cultural and economic heart. Other large cities in Nepal include Pokhara, Biratnagar, Lalitpur, Bharatpur, Birgunj, Dharan, Hetauda and Nepalgunj.
Congestion, pollution and drinking water shortage are some of the major
problems facing the rapidly growing cities, most prominently the
Kathmandu Valley.
Descendent of Sanskrit, Nepali is written in Devanagari script. It is the official language and serves as lingua franca among Nepali 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 Himalaya 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, as declared by the Constitution of Nepal
2012 (Part 1, Article 4), where secularism 'means religious, cultural
freedom, along with the protection of religion, culture handed down from
time immemorial (सनातन)'. The 2011 census reported that the religion with the largest number of followers in Nepal was Hinduism (81.3% of the population), followed by Buddhism (9%); the remaining were Islam (4.4%), Kirant (3.1%), Christianity (1.4%) and Prakriti or nature worship (0.5%). By percentage of population, Nepal has the largest population of Hindus in the world. Nepal was officially a Hindu Kingdom until recently, and Shiva was considered the guardian deity of the country.
Although many government policies throughout history have disregarded
or marginalised minority religions, Nepalese societies generally enjoy
religious tolerance and harmony among all religions, with only isolated
incidents of religiously motivated violence.
Nepal's constitution does not give anyone the right to convert any
person to another religion. Nepal also passed a more stringent anti-conversion law on 2017. Nepal has the second-largest number of Hindus in the world after India.
Nepal entered modernity in 1951 with a literacy rate of 5% and about 10,000 students enrolled in 300 schools. By 2017, there were more than seven million students enrolled in 35,601 schools. The overall literacy rate (for population age 5 years and above) increased from 54.1% in 2001 to 65.9% in 2011. The net primary enrolment rate reached 97% by 2017, yet enrolment was less than 60% at the secondary level (grades 9 –12), and around 12% at the tertiary level. Though there is significant gender disparity in overall literacy rate, girls have overtaken boys in enrolment to all levels of education. Nepal has eleven universities and four independent science academies. Nepal was ranked 111st in the Global Innovation Index in 2021, down from 109th in 2019.
Lack of proper infrastructures and teaching materials, and a high
student-to-teacher ratio, as well as politicisation of school
management committees and partisan unionisation among both students and teachers,
present a hurdle to progress. Free basic education is guaranteed in the
constitution but the programme lacks funding for effective
implementation.
Government has scholarship programmes for girls and disabled students
as well as the children of martyrs, marginalised communities and the
poor.
Tens of thousands of Nepali students leave the country every year in
search of better education and work, with half of them never returning.
Historical development of life expectancy in Nepal
Health care services in Nepal are provided by both the public and
private sectors. Life expectancy at birth is estimated at 71 years as of
2017, 153rd highest in the world, up from 54 years in the 1990s and 35 years in 1950. Two-thirds of all deaths are due to non-communicable diseases; heart disease is the leading cause of death.
While sedentary lifestyle, imbalanced diet and consumption of tobacco
and alcohol has contributed in the rise of non-communicable diseases,
many lose their life to communicable and treatable diseases caused by
poor sanitation and malnutrition due to a lack of education, awareness
and access to healthcare services.
Nepal has made great progress in maternal and child health. 95%
of children have access to iodised salt, and 86% of children aged 6 – 59
months receive Vitamin A prophylaxis. Stunting, underweight and wasting has been reduced significantly; malnutrition, at 43% among children under five, is extremely high. Anemia in women and children increased between 2011 and 2016, reaching 41% and 53% respectively. Low birth weight is at 27% while breastfeeding is at 65%. Nepal has reduced maternal mortality rate to 229, from 901 in 1990; infant mortality is down to 32.2 per thousand live births compared to 139.8 in 1990.
Contraceptive prevalence rate is 53% but the disparity rate between
rural and urban areas is high due to a lack of awareness and easy
access.
Progress in health is driven by strong government initiative in
cooperation with NGOs and INGOs. Public health centres provide 72
essential medicines free of cost. In addition, the public health
insurance plan initiated in 2016 which covers health treatments of up to
Rs 50,000 for five members of a family, for a premium of Rs 2500 per
year, has seen limited success, and is expected to expand.
By paying stipends for four antenatal visits to health centres and
hospitalised delivery, Nepal decreased home-births from 81% in 2006 to 41% in 2016. School meal programmes have improved education as well as nutrition metrics among children.
Toilet building subsidies under the ambitious "one household-one
toilet" programme has seen toilet prevalence rate reach 99% in 2019,
from just 6% in 1990.
Nepal has a long tradition of accepting immigrants and refugees.
In modern times, Tibetans and Bhutanese have constituted a majority of
refugees in Nepal. Tibetan refugees began arriving in 1959, and many more cross into Nepal every year. The Bhutanese Lhotsampa
refugees began arriving in the 1980s and numbered more than 110,000 by
the 2000s. Most of them have been resettled in third countries. In late 2018, Nepal had a total of 20,800 confirmed refugees, 64% of them Tibetan and 31% Bhutanese.
Economic immigrants, and refugees fleeing persecution or war, from
neighbouring countries, Africa and the Middle East, termed "urban
refugees" because they live in apartments in the cities instead of
refugee camps, lack official recognition; the government facilitates their resettlement in third countries.
Around 2,000 immigrants, half of them Chinese, applied for a work
permit in 2018/19. The government lacks data on Indian immigrants as
they do not require permits to live and work in Nepal; Government of India puts the number of Non-Resident Indians in the country at 600,000.
Traditional Nepali society is sometimes defined by social hierarchy. The Nepali caste system
embodies much of the social stratification and many of the social
restrictions found in South Asia. Social classes are defined by more
than a hundred endogamous hereditary groups, often termed as jātis, or "castes". Nepal declared untouchability to be illegal in 1963
and has since enacted other anti-discriminatory laws and social welfare
initiatives. At the workplace and educational institutions in urban
Nepal, caste-related identification has pretty much lost its importance.
Family values are important in the Nepali tradition, and
multi-generational patriarchal joint families have been the norm in
Nepal, though nuclear families are becoming common in urban areas. An
overwhelming majority of Nepalis, with or without their consent, have their marriages arranged
by their parents or other family elders. Marriage is thought to be for
life, and the divorce rate is extremely low, with less than one in a
thousand marriages ending in divorce. Child marriages are common, especially in rural areas; many women wed before reaching 18.
The emblem of Nepal depicts the snowy Himalayas, the forested hills,
and the fertile Terai, supported by a wreath of rhododendrons, with the
national flag at the crest and in the foreground, a plain white map of
Nepal below it, and a man's and woman's right hands joined to signify
gender equality. At the bottom is the national motto, a Sanskrit quote
of patriotism attributed in Nepali folklore to Lord Rama, written in
Devanagari script—"Mother and motherland are greater than heaven".
Nepal's flag is the only national flag in the world that is not rectangular in shape. The constitution contains instructions for a Geometric Construction of the double-pennant flag.
According to its official description, the crimson in the flag stands
for victory in war or courage, and is also the colour of the rhododendron.
The flag's blue border signifies Nepali people's desire for peace. The
moon on the flag is a symbol of the peaceful and calm nature of Nepalis,
while the sun represents the aggressiveness of Nepali warriors.
The president is the symbol of national unity. The martyrs are the symbols of patriotism. Commanders of the Anglo-Nepalese war, Amar Singh Thapa, Bhakti Thapa,
and Balbhadra Kunwar are considered war heroes. A special designation
of "National hero" has been conferred to 16 people from Nepal's history
for their exceptional contributions to the prestige of Nepal. Prithvi
Narayan Shah, the founder of modern Nepal, is held in high regard and
considered "Father of the Nation" by many.
Clockwise from top-left: (a) Nyatapola, a five storied pagoda in Bhaktapur, bejewelled with characteristic stone, metal and wood craftsmanship, has survived at least four major earthquakes.
Pagodas, now an indispensable part of East Asian architecture, are
conjectured to have been transmitted to China from Nepal. (b) Nepali
stonecraft in a royal water spout (c) A traditional Newar "Ankhijhyal"
window in the form of a peacock
The oldest known examples of architecture in Nepal are stupas of early Buddhist constructions in and around Kapilvastu in south-western Nepal, and those constructed by Ashoka in the Kathmandu Valley c. 250
BC. The characteristic architecture associated exclusively with Nepal
was developed and refined by Newa artisans of the Kathmandu Valley
starting no later than the Lichchhavi period. A Tang dynasty Chinese travel book, probably based on records from c. 650 AD,
describes contemporary Nepali architecture, predominantly built with
wood, as rich in artistry, as well as wood and metal sculpture. It
describes a magnificent seven-storied pagoda in the middle of a palace,
with copper-tiled roofs, its balustrade, grills, columns and beams set
about with fine and precious stones, and four golden sculptures of Makaras
in the four corners of the base spouting water from their mouths like a
fountain, supplied by copper pipes connected to the runnels at the top
of the tower. Later Chinese chronicles describe Nepal's king's palace as
an immense structure with many roofs, suggesting that the Chinese were
not yet familiar with the pagoda architecture, which has now become one
of the chief characteristics of Chinese architecture.
A typical pagoda temple is built with wood, every piece of it
finely carved with geometrical patterns or images of gods, goddesses,
mythical beings and beasts. The roofs usually tiled with clay, and
sometimes gold plated, diminish in proportion successively until the
topmost roof is reached which is itself ensigned by a golden finial. The
base is usually composed of rectangular terraces of finely carved
stone; the entrance is usually guarded by stone sculptures of
conventional figures. Bronze and copper craftsmanship observable in the
sculpture of deities and beasts, decorations of doors and windows and
the finials of buildings, as well as items of every day use is found to
be of equal splendour. The most well-developed of Nepali painting
traditions is the thanka or paubha painting tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, practised in Nepal by the Buddhist monks and Newar artisans. Changu Narayan Temple, built c.
4th century AD has probably the finest of Nepali woodcraft; the
Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur Durbar Squares are the culmination of
Nepali art and architecture, showcasing Nepali wood, metal and stone
craftsmanship refined over two millennia.
The "ankhijhyal" window,
that allow a one-way view of the outside world, is an example of unique
Nepali woodcraft, found in building structures, domestic and public
alike, ancient and modern. Many cultures paint the walls of their homes
with regular patterns, figures of gods and beasts and religious symbols;
others paint their walls plain, often with clay or chernozem
contrasted with yellow soil or limestone. The roofs of religious as
well as domestic structures project considerably, presumably to provide
protection from the sun and the rain. The timber of domestic structures
are finely carved as with their religious counterparts.
Nepal's literature was closely intertwined with that of the rest of
South Asia until its unification into a modern kingdom. Literary works,
which were written in Sanskrit by Brahmin priests educated and sometimes
also based in Varanasi, included religious texts and other fantasies
involving kings, gods and demons.
The oldest extant Nepali language text is dated to the 13th century but
except for the epigraphic material, Nepali language literature older
than the 17th century haven't been found. Newar literature dates back
almost 500 years.
The modern history of Nepali literature begins with Bhanubhakta Acharya
(1814–1868), who for the first time composed major and influential
works in Nepali, the language accessible to the masses, most
prominently, the Bhanubhakta Ramayana, a translation of the ancient Hindu epic. By the end of the nineteenth century, Motiram Bhatta
had published print editions of the works of Acharya, and through his
efforts, single-handedly popularised and propelled Nepali language
literature into modernity.
By the mid-twentieth century, Nepali literature was no longer limited
to the Hindu literary traditions. Influenced by western literary
traditions, writers in this period started producing literary works
addressing the contemporary social problems,
while many others continued to enrich Nepali poetic traditions with
authentic Nepali poetry. Newar literature also emerged as a premier
literary tradition. After the advent of democracy in 1951, Nepali
literature flourished. Literary works in many other languages began to
be produced. Nepali literature continued to modernise, and in recent
years, has been strongly influenced by the post civil-war Nepali
experience as well as global literary traditions.
Maruni, Lakhey, Sakela, Kauda and Tamang Selo are some examples of the traditional Nepali music and dance in the hilly regions of Nepal.
Nepali film industry is known as "Kollywood".
Nepal Academy is the foremost institution for the promotion of arts and culture in Nepal, established in 1957.
Clothing
A Nepali man in Daura-Suruwal, coat and Dhaka topi, displays the bhoto during the Bhoto Jatra festival.
The most widely worn traditional dress in Nepal, for both women and
men, from ancient times until the advent of modern times, was draped. For women, it eventually took the form of a sari, a single long piece of cloth, famously six yards long, and of width spanning the lower body. The sari is tied around the waist and knotted at one end, wrapped around the lower body, and then over the shoulder. In its more modern form, it has been used to cover the head, and sometimes the face, as a veil, particularly in the Terai. It has been combined with an underskirt, or the petticoat, and tucked in the waistband for more secure fastening. It is worn with a blouse, or cholo,
which serves as the primary upper-body garment, the sari's end, passing
over the shoulder, now serving to obscure the upper body's contours,
and to cover the midriff.
Cholo-sari has become the attire of choice for formal occasions,
official environs and festive gatherings. In its more traditional form,
as part of traditional dresses and as worn in daily life while
performing household chores or labour, it takes the form of a fariya or gunyu, usually shorter than a sari in length as well as breadth, and all of it wrapped around the lower body.
For men, a similar but shorter length of cloth, the dhoti, has served as a lower-body garment. It too is tied around the waist and wrapped.
Among the Aryans, it is also wrapped once around each leg before being
brought up through the legs to be tucked in at the back. Dhoti or its
variants, usually worn over a langauti,
constitute the lower-body garment in the traditional clothing of
Tharus, Gurungs and Magars as well as the Madhesi people, among others.
Other forms of traditional apparel that involve no stitching or
tailoring are patukas
(a length of cloth wrapped tightly over the waist by both sexes as a
waistband, a part of most traditional Nepali costumes, usually with a
khukuri tucked into it when worn by men), scarves like pachhyauras and majetros and shawls like the newar ga and Tibetan khata, ghumtos (the wedding veils) and various kinds of turbans (scarves worn around the head as a part of a tradition, or to keep off the sun or the cold, called a pheta, pagri or sirpau).
Until the beginning of the first millennium AD, the ordinary dress of people in South Asia was entirely unstitched. The arrival of the Kushans from Central Asia, c. 48 AD, popularised cut and sewn garments in the style of Central Asia.
The simplest form of sewn clothing, Bhoto (a rudimentary vest), is a
universal unisex clothing for children, and traditionally the only
clothing children wear until they come of age and are given adult garb,
sometimes in a ceremonial rite of passage, such as the gunyu-choli
ceremony for Hindu girls. Men continue to wear bhoto through adulthood.
Upper body garment for men is usually a vest such as the bhoto, or a shirt similar to the kurta, such as daura, a closed-necked double-breasted long shirt with five pleats and eight strings that serve to tie it around the body. Suruwal, simply translated as a pair of trousers, is an alternative to and, more recently, replacement for dhoti, kachhad (Magars) or lungi
(Tharus); it is traditionally much wider above the knees but tapers
below, to fit tightly at the ankles, and is tied to the waist with a
drawstring. Modern cholos worn with sarees are usually half-sleeved and
single-breasted, and do not cover the midriff. The traditional one
called the chaubandi cholo, like the daura, is full-sleeved,
double-breasted with pleats and strings, and extends down to the patuka,
covering the midriff.
Daura-Suruwal and Gunyu-Cholo were the national dresses for men
and women respectively until 2011 when they were removed to eliminate
favouritism.[308]
Traditional dresses of many pahari ethnic groups are Daura-Suruwal or
similar, with patuka, a dhaka topi and a coat for men, and Gunyu-cholo
or similar, with patuka and sometimes a scarf for women. For many other
groups, men's traditional dresses consist of a shirt or a vest, paired
with a dhoti, kachhad or lungi. In the high Himalayas, the traditional dresses are largely influenced by Tibetan culture. Sherpa women wear the chuba with the pangi
apron, while Sherpa men wear shirts with stiff high collar and long
sleeves called tetung under the chuba. Tibetan Xamo Gyaise hats of the
Sherpas, dhaka topi of pahari men and tamang round caps are among the more distinctive headwears.
Married Hindu women wear tika, sindur, pote and red bangles. Jewellery of gold and silver, and sometimes precious stones, are common. Gold jewellery includes mangalsutras and tilaharis worn with the pote by the Hindus, samyafung (a huge gold flower worn on the head) and Nessey (huge flattened gold earrings) worn by the Limbus, and sirphuli, sirbandhi and chandra worn by the Magars. Tharu women can wear as much as six kilograms of silver in jewellery, which includes mangiya worn on the head, tikuli the forehead, and kanseri and tikahamala around the neck.
In the last 50 years, fashions have changed a great deal in
Nepal. Increasingly, in urban settings, the sari is no longer the
apparel of everyday wear, transformed instead into one for formal
occasions. The traditional kurta suruwal is rarely worn by younger
women, who increasingly favour jeans. The dhoti has largely been reduced to the liturgicalvestment of shamans and Hindu priests.
A dal-bhat thali with boiled rice, lentil soup, fried leafy greens, vegetable curry, yoghurt, papad and vegetable salad
Nepali cuisine consists of a wide variety of regional and traditional
cuisines. Given the range of diversity in soil type, climate, culture,
ethnic groups, and occupations, these cuisines vary substantially from
each other, using locally available spices, herbs, vegetables, and
fruit. The Columbian exchange had brought the potato, the tomato, maize, peanuts, cashew nuts, pineapples, guavas, and most notably, chilli peppers, to South Asia. Each became staples of use. The cereals grown in Nepal, their choice, times, and regions of planting, correspond strongly to the timing of Nepal's monsoons,
and the variations in altitude. Rice and wheat are mostly cultivated in
the terai plains and well-irrigated valleys, and maize, millet, barley
and buckwheat in the lesser fertile and drier hills.
The foundation of a typical Nepali meal is a cereal cooked in plain fashion, and complemented with flavourful savoury dishes. The latter includes lentils, pulses and vegetables spiced commonly with ginger and garlic, but also more discerningly with a combination of spices that may include coriander, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamon, jimbu and others as informed by culinary conventions. In an actual meal, this mental representation takes the form of a platter, or thali,
with a central place for the cooked cereal, peripheral ones, often in
small bowls, for the flavourful accompaniments, and the simultaneous,
rather than piecemeal, ingestion of the two in each act of eating,
whether by actual mixing—for example of rice and lentils—or in the
folding of one—such as bread—around the other, such as cooked
vegetables. Dal-bhat, centred around steamed rice is the most common example.
as well as dairy and sometimes meat, is the most common and prominent
example. The unleavened flat bread made from wheat flour called chapati
occasionally replaces the steamed rice, particularly in the Terai,
while Dhindo, prepared by boiling corn, millet or buckwheat flour in
water, continuously stirring and adding flour until thick, almost solid
consistency is reached, is the main substitute in the hills and
mountains. Tsampa, flour made from roasted barley or naked barley, is
the main staple in the high himalayas. Throughout Nepal, fermented, then
sun-dried, leafy greens called Gundruk, are both a delicacy and a vital substitute for fresh vegetables in the winter.
Momo dumplings with chutney
A notable feature of Nepali food is the existence of a number of
distinctive vegetarian cuisines, each a feature of the geographical and
cultural histories of its adherents. The appearance of ahimsa, or the avoidance of violence toward all forms of life in many religious orders early in South Asian history, especially Upanishadic Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism,
is thought to have been a notable factor in the prevalence of
vegetarianism among a segment of Nepal's Hindu and Buddhist populations,
as well as among Jains. Among these groups, strong discomfort is felt at thoughts of eating meat.
Though per capita meat consumption is low in Nepal, the proportion of
vegetarianism is not high as in India, due to the prevalence of Shaktism, of which animal sacrifice is a prominent feature.
Samayabaji (Newar cuisine)
Nepali cuisines possess their own distinctive qualities to
distinguish these hybrid cuisines from both their northern and southern
neighbours.
Nepali cuisines, with generally tomato-based, leaner curries, are
lighter than their cream-based Indian counterparts, and Nepali momo
dumplings are heavily spiced compared to their northern counterparts.
Newar cuisine, one of the richest and most influential in Nepal, is
more elaborate and diverse than most, as Newar culture developed in the
highly fertile and prosperous Kathmandu valley.
A typical Newar cuisine can comprise more than a dozen dishes of
cereals, meat, vegetable curries, chutneys and pickles. Kwanti (sprouted
beans soup), chhwela (ground beef), chatamari (rice flour crepe), bara (fried lentil cake), kachila (marinated raw minced beef), samaybaji (centred around flattened rice), lakhaamari and yomuri are among the more widely recognised. Juju dhau, a sweet yoghurt originating in Bhaktapur, is also famous.
Thakali cuisine is another well-known food tradition which seamlessly
melds the Tibetan and the Indian with variety in ingredients, especially
the herbs and spices. In the Terai, Bagiya is a rice flour dumpling with sweets inside, popular among the Tharu and Maithil people. Various communities in the Terai make sidhara (sun-dried small fish mixed with taro leaves) and biriya (lentil paste mixed with taro leaves) to stock for the monsoon floods. Selroti, kasaar, fini and chaku are among the sweet delicacies. Rice pulau or sweet rice porridge called kheer are usually the main dish in feasts.
Tea and buttermilk (fermented milk leftover from churning butter from
yoghurt) are common non-alcoholic drinks. Almost all janajati
communities have their own traditional methods of brewing alcohol. Raksi
(traditional distilled alcohol), jaand (rice beer), tongba (millet
beer) and chyaang are the most well-known.
Nepali children playing a variant of knucklebones, with pebbles
Nepali indigenous sports, like dandi biyo and kabaddi which were considered the unofficial national sports until recently, are still popular in rural areas. Despite efforts, standardisation and development of dandi biyo has not been achieved, while Kabaddi, as a professional sport, is still in its infancy in Nepal. Bagh-Chal, an ancient board game that's thought to have originated in Nepal, can be played on chalk-drawn boards, with pebbles, and is still popular today. Ludo, snakes and ladders and carrom are popular pastimes. Chess is also played. Volleyball was declared as the national sport of Nepal in 2017. Popular children's games include versions of tag, knucklebones, hopscotch, Duck, duck, goose and lagori, while marbles, top, hoop rolling and gully cricket are also popular among boys. Rubber bands, or ranger bands cut from tubes in bike tyres, make a multi-purpose sporting equipment for Nepali children, which may be bunched or chained together, and used to play dodgeball, cat's cradle, jianzi and a variety of skipping rope games.
Nepali cricket fans are renowned for their exceptionally enthusiastic support of their national team.
Football and cricket are popular professional sports. Nepal is competitive in football in the South Asia region but has never won the SAFF championships, the regional tournament. It usually ranks in the bottom quarter in the FIFA World Rankings. Nepal has had success in cricket and holds the elite ODI status, consistently ranking in the Top 20 in the ICCODI and T20I rankings.Nepal has had some success in athletics and martial arts, having won many medals at the South Asian Games and some at the Asian games. Nepal has never won an olympic medal. Sports like basketball, volleyball, futsal, wrestling, competitive bodybuilding and badminton are also gaining in popularity. Women in football, cricket, athletics, martial arts, badminton and swimming have found some success. Nepal also fields players and national teams in several tournaments for disabled individuals, most notably in men's as well as women's blind cricket.
The only international stadium in the country is the multi-purpose Dasarath Stadium where the men and women national football teams play their home matches. Since the formation of the national team, Nepal has played its home matches of cricket at Tribhuvan University International Cricket Ground.
Nepal police, Armed police force and Nepal army are the most prolific
producers of national players, and aspiring players are known to join
armed forces, for the better sporting opportunities they can provide. Nepali sports is hindered by a lack of infrastructure, funding, corruption, nepotism and political interference. Very few players are able to make a living as professional sportspeople.
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