Himal · Pahad · Terai
Nepal's three ecological belts run east to west like stripes: the Himal to the north, the Pahad in the middle and the Terai along the Indian border.
- Himal
- Pahad
- Terai
- places
- Hidden gem
Himal — the mountains
The Himal (mountain) belt covers the northern third of Nepal, above roughly 3,000 m in its inhabited valleys and rising to the highest peaks on earth. Eight of the fourteen 8,000 m mountains stand on or inside Nepal's border, including Everest, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu and Annapurna.
16 districts · 59 places →Pahad — the hills
The Pahad (hill) belt is the middle of Nepal, roughly 600 to 3,000 m: terraced ridges, river valleys, rhododendron forest and the Kathmandu and Pokhara valleys. Forty districts are classed as hill districts, and this is where most of Nepal's history was made — the Licchavi and Malla kingdoms, the Chaubise and Baise principalities and the Gorkha unification.
40 districts · 113 places →Terai — the plains
The Terai is the flat, fertile strip along the Indian border, mostly below 300 m, together with the inner-Terai valleys such as Chitwan and Dang behind the Chure (Siwalik) hills. Twenty-one districts are classed as Terai. Once malarial jungle, it is now Nepal's breadbasket and home to about half its people.
21 districts · 49 places →