16 Unbelievable Facts About Nepali Culture People and History

Nepal has a language related to no other language on Earth

Kusunda is a genuine language isolate — linguists have found no relatives for it anywhere in South Asia or beyond. It has, at present, one fluent native speaker: Kamala Sen Khatri of Dang district, born 1975. Her elder sister Gyani Maiya, long assumed to be the last speaker, died in January 2020.

The 2021 census recorded just 253 people identifying as Kusunda, down from 273 in 2011. The community call themselves gemjehaq, "king of the forest." Revival classes now teach the language to Kusunda children and to outside volunteers.

National Population and Housing Census 2021; Language Commission of Nepal documentation.

Sherpa high-altitude ability may come from an extinct human species

Research published in Nature in 2014 found that Tibetan and Sherpa populations carry a distinctive version of the EPAS1 gene, which regulates the body's haemoglobin response to low oxygen — and that this variant appears to have entered the human gene pool from the Denisovans, an archaic human group that died out tens of thousands of years ago.

Sherpa climbers are not simply well trained. Their physiology is measurably different, and the difference is inherited from a species that no longer exists.

Nepal still has a nomadic hunter-gatherer community

The Raute, numbering roughly 140 people in western Nepal, remain the country's last fully nomadic group. They move camp every few weeks, hunt langur monkeys, and trade hand-carved wooden bowls and boxes with settled villagers for grain. They have consistently refused permanent settlement.

No single ethnic group forms a majority in Nepal

The 2021 census counted 142 caste and ethnic groups and 124 mother tongues. The largest single group, Chhetri, is 16.45% of the population. Nepal is a country composed entirely of minorities — which is precisely why the federal structure and language provisions of the 2015 constitution were argued over so fiercely.

In Newar tradition, a woman can never become a widow

Newar girls go through Ihi (इहि), a ceremony in which they are married to a bel fruit — the wood-apple, symbol of the eternal god Suvarna Kumar — before puberty. A second ceremony, Bara Tayegu, marries them to the sun.

Because her first husband is divine and imperishable, a Newar woman's human marriage is technically her second. If her husband dies she is not considered a widow in the traditional sense, and is not subject to the restrictions that historically fell on widows across South Asia. It is one of the most quietly radical social customs in the region, and it is centuries old.

Nepal has a national holiday for worshipping dogs

Kukur Tihar, the second day of the Tihar festival, is dedicated entirely to dogs. Street dogs and household dogs alike are garlanded with marigolds, given a tika on the forehead and fed special food. Nepal Police dogs receive full ceremonial treatment. Crows, cows and oxen get their own days across the five-day festival.

There is a festival where mocking the government is the tradition

Gai Jatra began as a way for the bereaved to grieve publicly: families who lost someone in the past year parade a cow, or a child dressed as one, to help the departed cross to the next world. Over centuries it absorbed a second function. On Gai Jatra, satire of rulers, politicians and public figures is not merely tolerated but expected, and newspapers publish special satirical editions.

Nepal's most important chariot festival takes over a month

The Rato Machhindranath Jatra in Patan is among the longest chariot festivals anywhere. A towering wheeled chariot, built fresh each year from timber and vines with no nails, is hauled through Lalitpur's streets over weeks. Every twelfth year the festival runs an extended route from Bungamati. The chariot regularly topples, which is itself read as an omen.

Nepal has a living goddess and she does eventually retire

The Kumari is selected as a young girl from the Newar Shakya community and worshipped as the embodiment of the goddess Taleju until she reaches puberty. A persistent myth claims former Kumaris cannot marry, or that marrying one brings misfortune. Many former Kumaris have married and live ordinary public lives, and several have spoken publicly about the transition.

A Nepali artist redesigned the skyline of Beijing

In 1260 a seventeen-year-old Nepali artisan named Araniko (अरनिको) led a team of around eighty Nepali craftsmen to Tibet and then to the court of Kublai Khan. He rose to become the Yuan dynasty's chief imperial artist and built the White Dagoba at Miaoying Temple in Beijing, completed in 1279 and still standing. Nepal's Araniko Highway to the Chinese border is named for him.

A Nepali princess is credited with bringing Buddhism to Tibet

Bhrikuti, daughter of the Licchavi king Amshuverma, married the Tibetan emperor Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century. Tibetan tradition holds that she and the Chinese princess Wencheng together introduced Buddhism to the Tibetan court. Bhrikuti is venerated in Tibetan Buddhism as an emanation of Green Tara.

Nepal abolished slavery in 1924 — and bonded labour only in 2000

Prime Minister Chandra Shumsher Rana abolished sati in 1920 and formally ended slavery in 1924, freeing tens of thousands of people whose owners were compensated by the state. But the Kamaiya system of bonded agricultural labour in the western Terai survived until it was outlawed in 2000, and the Haliya bonded ploughman system until 2008. Nepal's abolition history is far more recent than most visitors assume.

Nepali public education is younger than commercial aviation

Under the Rana regime, education was restricted largely to the ruling class. When the Ranas fell in 1951, adult literacy in Nepal stood at roughly 5%. The 2021 census put it above 76%. Nepal covered that distance within a single long lifetime.

Gurkha regiments hold 26 Victoria Crosses

The Victoria Cross is Britain's highest award for valour, and Gurkha regiments have received 26 of them. Recruitment began in 1815, immediately after the British East India Company fought Nepal to a costly stalemate in the Anglo-Nepalese War. They hired the soldiers who had impressed them.

Nepalis routinely use four or five calendars at once

A single Nepali wedding invitation can carry two different dates for the same day, and nobody finds this strange.

Nepal's national anthem mentions no king, no war and no weapon

"Sayaun Thunga Phulka" (सयौं थुँगा फूलका) was adopted in 2007 after the monarchy's powers were stripped. The lyrics, by Byakul Maila, were selected from 1,272 submissions. The song is about a garland of a hundred flowers — Nepal's many peoples woven together. It celebrates diversity and geography rather than conquest, which makes it genuinely unusual among national anthems.