Gorkha Districtगोरखा जिल्ला

Gorkha is where modern Nepal began. The hilltop Gorkha Durbar, palace-fortress of the Shah dynasty, was the birthplace of Prithvi Narayan Shah, who launched the unification of Nepal from this small hill kingdom beginning with the capture of Nuwakot in 1744; the name of the Gurkha soldiers derives from Gorkha. The Manakamana temple in the district's south-east, believed to grant the wishes of its pilgrims, is one of Nepal's busiest shrines and has been reached since 1998 by the country's first commercial cable car, rising from Kurintar on the Prithvi Highway.

At 3,610 km² Gorkha is the largest district of Gandaki Province, stretching from subtropical valleys below 500 m on the Trishuli and Marsyangdi fringes to the summit of Manaslu (8,163 m), the world's eighth-highest mountain. The Budhi Gandaki, Chepe, Daraudi and Marsyangdi rivers drain its long north–south ridges. Northern Gorkha lies inside the Manaslu Conservation Area (1,663 km², declared 1998), whose Nubri, Kutang and Tsum valleys are home to Tibetan-origin Buddhist communities and centuries-old monasteries; the semi-restricted Manaslu Circuit and Tsum Valley treks have made it one of Nepal's fastest-growing trekking destinations.

The 2021 census counted 251,027 people, down from 271,061 in 2011, with Gurung, Magar, Brahmin-Chhetri, Newar and Dalit communities spread over 11 local levels. Gorkha was the epicentral district of the 25 April 2015 earthquake — the Mw 7.8 'Gorkha earthquake' nucleated beneath Barpak in today's Barpak Sulikot Rural Municipality, killing almost 9,000 people nationwide and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes; reconstruction dominated the district's public life for the following half-decade. Literacy, at 72.4%, remains the lowest in Gandaki Province, a measure of the remoteness of its northern valleys.

Gorkha is the cradle of the modern Nepali state. The little hill kingdom took shape in 1559, when Dravya Shah — a younger son of the royal house of neighbouring Lamjung — seized the hilltop fort of Liglig Kot and then conquered Gorkha with the help of local notables such as Ganesh Pandey and Narayan Aryal, founding the Shah dynasty there. Local tradition holds that the Ghale chieftains who had long ruled the Liglig area chose their king each year by a foot race up to the fort on Vijaya Dashami, and that Dravya Shah's victory in that contest marked the turning point. The district and the dynasty take their name from the warrior-saint Gorakhnath, whose cave shrine sits below the Gorkha palace.

Over the following generations the Gorkha kings consolidated and extended their realm. King Ram Shah (reigned in the early 17th century) is remembered as a reformer and law-giver and is associated with the hilltop Gorkha Durbar, the fortress-palace whose pagoda roofs and finely carved Newari woodwork still crown the ridge above Gorkha bazaar. It was in this palace, in 1723, that Prithvi Narayan Shah was born to King Nara Bhupal Shah and Queen Kaushalyawati; he came to the throne in 1743.

From Gorkha, Prithvi Narayan Shah launched the unification of Nepal. His campaigns began in earnest with the capture of Nuwakot in 1744, securing a base on the approaches to the Kathmandu Valley, and culminated in the conquest of the three Malla kingdoms of the valley — Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur — in 1768–69, after which he proclaimed a unified Kingdom of Nepal and moved his capital to Kathmandu. Until then the central Himalaya had been fragmented into the Baisi (twenty-two) and Chaubisi (twenty-four) principalities; Gorkha's expansion welded them into a single state. Prithvi Narayan Shah, who died in 1775, is honoured as the Father of the Nation, and the name of the Gurkha soldiers — recruited from these hills into the British and later Indian armies — derives from Gorkha.

Gorkha returned to world headlines on 25 April 2015, when a magnitude Mw 7.8 earthquake nucleated beneath the village of Barpak in northern Gorkha, about 85 km north-west of Kathmandu. Known internationally as the Gorkha earthquake, it killed roughly 8,900 people across Nepal and neighbouring countries, injured more than 21,000 and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes — the worst disaster to strike Nepal since the 1934 quake. Barpak and surrounding villages were among the most heavily damaged settlements in the country, and reconstruction of homes, schools and heritage structures dominated the district's public life for the rest of the decade.

At about 3,610 km² Gorkha is the largest district of Gandaki Province and among the largest in Nepal, and it spans one of the steepest terrain gradients in the country. Its land rises from subtropical river valleys only a couple of hundred metres above sea level on the southern fringe to the summit of Manaslu at 8,163 m, the world's eighth-highest mountain, on the Tibetan frontier in the north. Other giants along the northern wall include Himalchuli (7,893 m), Ngadi Chuli (7,871 m) and, on the eastern edge, Ganesh Himal (7,422 m); a dozen or more peaks above 7,000 m stand within or on the borders of the district.

Gorkha is drained by long, deeply incised north–south river valleys. The Budhi Gandaki rises among the glaciers of the Manaslu Himal and carves the central trough of the district before joining the Trishuli to the south; the Marsyangdi runs along the western boundary, while the Daraudi and Chepe gather the central and eastern hill country. These rivers, with their steep gradients and glacial flows, give the district substantial hydropower potential and define the ridgelines on which most villages sit.

The climate follows the elevation: subtropical and warm in the low river valleys of the south, temperate across the densely terraced mid-hills around Gorkha bazaar, and alpine to arctic in the high north, where a trans-Himalayan zone gives way to permanent snow and ice. The northern third of the district lies within the Manaslu Conservation Area, a 1,663 km² protected zone declared in December 1998 that ranges from mid-hill forest up to the high peaks and shelters snow leopard, musk deer, Himalayan tahr, blue sheep and more than 2,000 plant species.

Agriculture is the foundation of Gorkha's economy. The terraced mid-hills produce rice, maize, millet, wheat and potatoes — maize and paddy dominating the cultivated area — and households supplement crop farming with livestock, especially goats and cattle. Productivity is constrained by the steep terrain, fragmented holdings and dependence on the monsoon, and most farming is at or near subsistence level.

As in much of Nepal's hill belt, remittances are a decisive part of household income. Gorkha has a long martial tradition — many families have members serving in British or Indian Gurkha regiments — and large numbers of young people work abroad in the Gulf, Malaysia and India; the money they send home funds education, health care and house-building, and helps explain the district's modest population decline as people move out of the remote northern valleys. The 2021 census counted about 251,000 people, down from roughly 271,000 in 2011.

Tourism is the district's fastest-growing sector and is concentrated at two poles. In the south, the Manakamana temple draws very large numbers of pilgrims, reached since 1998 by Nepal's first commercial cable car. In the north, the Manaslu Conservation Area has become one of Nepal's most sought-after trekking regions: the Manaslu Circuit, crossing the Larkya La pass at about 5,106 m, and the side trip into the sacred Tsum Valley together draw several thousand trekkers a year, supporting lodges, guides and porters along the route. Heritage tourism around the Gorkha Durbar adds a further, year-round draw.

Gorkha is ethnically diverse, reflecting its sweep from the warm lowlands to the high Himalaya. The 2021 census records Gurung as the largest single group (about 21%), followed by Brahmin/Bahun (around 12%), Magar (about 11.5%), Chhetri (about 11%) and Newar (around 7%), with Tamang, Ghale, Kumal and other communities also present. Nepali is the most widely spoken language (about 67%), but Gurung (around 16%) and Magar are strongly represented, and Tibetan dialects are spoken in the far north. Hinduism is the majority religion (about 70%), with a substantial Buddhist minority (around 16%) concentrated in the northern valleys.

The high northern valleys of the Manaslu Conservation Area — Nubri, Kutang and Tsum — are home to Tibetan-origin Buddhist communities whose culture is centred on village gompas such as Mu and Rachen in the Tsum Valley and Shringi Gompa at Bihi. The Tsum Valley, opened to outside trekkers only in 2008, is a particularly distinctive cultural enclave with a strong tradition of Buddhist non-violence. By contrast, the mid-hill heartland around the district headquarters is a Hindu cultural landscape, with Dashain, Tihar and the festivals of the Kalika and Gorakhkali temples shaping the ritual calendar.

Gorkha's identity is bound up with its martial and historical heritage. As the homeland of the Shah dynasty and the origin of the Gurkha name, it is a place of national pilgrimage; the Gorkha Durbar, the hilltop temples and the figure of Prithvi Narayan Shah are central to Nepal's sense of its own founding. The annual Liglige Race, run up to the historic Liglig Kot fort on Vijaya Dashami, keeps alive the local legend of the contest by which Dravya Shah is said to have won his crown.