Jajarkot Districtजाजरकोट जिल्ला

Jajarkot covers 2,230 km² of steep hill country in the Bheri river basin, climbing from subtropical valley floors (37.3% of its area) through temperate mid-slopes (34.6%) to subalpine ridges (16.9%) toward the Dolpa border. The headquarters, Khalanga in Bheri Municipality, is a ridge-top bazaar town above the Bheri, home to the historic Jajarkot Palace. Seven local levels — three municipalities (Bheri, Chhedagad and Nalgad, the last earlier called Tribeni Nalgad) and four rural municipalities — administer the district.

The 2021 census counted 189,360 people, up 0.96% a year from 2011. The population is overwhelmingly Khas: Chhetri 39.3%, Kami 22.6% and Thakuri 16.2%, with 98.4% speaking Nepali as their first language and 98.7% Hindu. Literacy stands at 75.5%. The economy rests on terrace farming and remittances, and the district has long ranked among Nepal's least served for roads, electricity and health care — a vulnerability the 2023 disaster exposed brutally.

Just before midnight on 3 November 2023, a magnitude 5.7 (Mw; 6.4 on the local scale) earthquake struck with its epicentre at Ramidanda in Barekot Rural Municipality. It killed 153 people — 101 of them in Jajarkot, including the deputy mayor of Nalgad — and injured around 375, making it Nepal's deadliest earthquake since 2015; nearly half of the dead were children. Roughly 62,000 houses across thirteen districts were damaged and 26,550 collapsed outright, most of them traditional stone-and-mud builds that failed while families slept. In Khalanga hardly a house was left intact, over 50 public buildings including the old palace collapsed, and the 50-bed district hospital was forced to treat the injured on floors and verandas.

Jajarkot was one of the Baise Rajya — the loose confederation of twenty-two petty kingdoms that ruled the Karnali–Bheri river basin of western Nepal after the fragmentation of the medieval Khasa (Western Malla) empire. The principality is traditionally said to have been founded in the late medieval period by a ruler who broke away from the declining Khas state, and it was later governed by a Thakuri Shah line whose kings held court above the Bheri at Khalanga. For centuries Jajarkot functioned as a sovereign hill kingdom, intermittently allied with and at war against its neighbours among the Baise states such as Salyan, Musikot, Dailekh and Jumla.

Like the rest of the Baise Rajya, Jajarkot was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of Nepal during the Gorkhali expansion that followed Prithvi Narayan Shah's conquests; the western principalities were brought under Kathmandu's overlordship in the campaigns of the late eighteenth century. Unusually, Jajarkot was among a small group of western states whose Thakuri rulers were permitted to keep their thrones and a measure of local administrative autonomy as tributaries of the Gorkha empire — a special status that, for the old royal houses of places like Bajhang, Mustang, Salyan and Jajarkot, lingered in symbolic form until Nepal was declared a republic in 2008.

The enduring monument of this royal past is the Jajarkot Palace (Jajarkot Durbar) at Khalanga, a multi-storey fortress-residence recorded as built by King Hari Shah in 1825 Bikram Sambat. Originally said to have been seven storeys tall, it was reduced to four by the great 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake, and was further damaged in the 2015 Gorkha earthquake; in the twentieth century its buildings passed into government hands and were used as district offices. In the modern era Jajarkot, like much of the Karnali hills, was caught up in the Maoist 'People's War' (1996–2006), which spread quickly through these neglected, hard-to-reach districts.

Jajarkot entered the wider world's news on the night of 3 November 2023, when an earthquake — magnitude 5.7 on the USGS moment-magnitude scale, recorded as 6.4 on Nepal's national local scale — struck just before midnight with its epicentre at Ramidanda in Barekot Rural Municipality. It was Nepal's deadliest quake since 2015: 153 people died in all, 101 of them in Jajarkot and 52 in neighbouring Western Rukum, with more than 375 injured and many of the dead being children asleep at home. Tens of thousands of houses — overwhelmingly traditional stone-and-mud builds — were damaged or collapsed across the region, and in Khalanga itself many public buildings, the historic palace among them, were wrecked.

Jajarkot occupies about 2,230 km² of steep middle-hill country in the Bheri river basin of Karnali Province, in west-central Nepal. It borders Rukum (West) to the east, Salyan to the south, Surkhet to the southwest, Dailekh and Kalikot to the west, and the high district of Dolpa to the north. The land rises dramatically from valley floors of around 600 metres to subalpine ridges exceeding 4,600 metres toward the Dolpa frontier, so a single district spans subtropical, temperate and subalpine life zones — about 37% of its area is subtropical, 35% temperate and 17% subalpine.

The defining waterway is the Bheri River, a major tributary of the Karnali that drains the district's hills and offers rafting, fishing and the makings of an eco-tourism trade; the Bheri Corridor road follows its valley. The terrain is classic Nepali mid-hill: narrow ridge-top settlements, terraced farmland clinging to slopes, and deeply incised river gorges. The headquarters town of Khalanga sits on a ridge roughly 1,000 metres above sea level, overlooking the Bheri.

The climate is monsoonal and strongly shaped by altitude, ranging from warm subtropical conditions in the lower valleys to cold mountain weather on the upper ridges. Annual rainfall typically runs between about 1,000 and 1,500 mm, concentrated in the June-to-September monsoon, when intense downpours on the steep, fragile slopes make landslides a recurring hazard — a vulnerability sharply worsened after the 2023 earthquake loosened the hillsides.

Jajarkot's economy is overwhelmingly agrarian. Most households practise subsistence terrace farming on the hillsides — cereals, maize, millet and seasonal vegetables — supplemented by livestock and, increasingly, by remittances sent home by men working in India and the Gulf. Cash incomes are thin, and the district has long ranked among Nepal's least developed, with limited roads, electricity and health services even by Karnali standards.

The lower, gentler pockets such as the Nalgad and Chhedagad valleys support more productive farming and small traditional villages, and the warm subtropical belt is suited to fruit and high-value crops. The Bheri river underpins a nascent tourism and adventure niche — rafting and fishing — while the district's natural hot springs, said locally to have therapeutic properties, draw visitors seeking relaxation.

Connectivity remains the central economic constraint: Jajarkot's road links, including the Bheri Corridor along the river, are repeatedly cut by monsoon landslides, isolating markets and raising the cost of everything that must be trucked in. The 2023 earthquake deepened the district's economic distress, destroying homes, schools and health posts and forcing tens of thousands into prolonged recovery, with rebuilding still incomplete in the years that followed.

Jajarkot's population — about 189,000 at the 2021 census — is overwhelmingly drawn from the Khas (Pahari) communities of the Karnali hills. Chhetri are the largest group at roughly 39%, followed by Kami at about 23% and Thakuri at about 16%, with Magar communities making up close to 9%. Nepali is the mother tongue of about 98% of residents, and Hinduism is practised by roughly 99% of the population, giving the district a culturally homogeneous, deeply Hindu character.

Daily life and the festival calendar revolve around the great Hindu observances — Dashain and Tihar above all — marked with traditional song, dance and feasting, alongside local temple fairs and pilgrimages. The Thakuri royal heritage of the old Jajarkot kingdom remains a strong source of local identity, embodied in the palace at Khalanga and in the memory of the district's days as an independent Baise principality. Magar communities in the district preserve elements of their own Tibeto-Burman cultural traditions alongside the dominant Khas Hindu mainstream.

Religious life centres on a scatter of hill temples and shrines — among them Shiva and Bhagwati temples and small cave sanctuaries — that double as pilgrimage destinations and community gathering points. As across the Karnali, social patterns are shaped by remoteness, by widespread seasonal male out-migration, and by a literacy rate that is improving but still reflects the district's long isolation.