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A warm welcome to Nepal in eight questions about the essentials. No expert knowledge needed: everyone can join in, from nine to ninety.
Fresh on the trail 0–3 · Mountain-path walker 4–6 · Friend of the Himalayas 7–8
Pick one
Kathmandu lies in a green valley about 1,300 metres above sea level. Its name comes from Kasthamandap, meaning 'wooden pavilion', a public shelter on the city's Durbar Square, and legend says that all the timber for the first one came from a single tree.
Photo: Gerd Eichmann, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Mount Everest is about 8,849 metres high, and in Nepal it is called Sagarmatha, roughly 'head in the sky'. Its English name honours the British surveyor George Everest, who himself objected to it, and in 1953 Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first people confirmed to reach the top.
Photo: Rdevany, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Momos are little pouches of dough with a tasty filling, steamed and then dipped in a spicy sauce called achar, and sometimes served in a soup. Samosas are popular in Nepal too, but they are fried pastries rather than steamed dumplings.
Photo: Kushal Goyal, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Nepal has no coast at all: India surrounds it on three sides, and China lies to the north, beyond the Himalayas. The country is only about 150 to 250 kilometres wide, yet in that short distance the land climbs from hot lowlands to the highest mountains on Earth.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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According to Buddhist texts, Queen Maya gave birth to Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha, in Lumbini. A stone pillar put up by Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE carries an inscription saying that he was born here, and Lumbini has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997.
Photo: Bibek Raj Pandeya, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Swayambhunath, on a hill just west of the city, is known as the Monkey Temple because families of monkeys wander all over it. On top of its white dome sits a square block painted with a pair of eyes on each side, looking out in all four directions.
Photo: Nabin K. Sapkota, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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For more than 40 years the red panda was the only animal called a panda, until the giant panda got its name in 1869. Despite their names the two are not closely related, and the word 'panda' itself may come from Nepali.
Photo: Sunuwargr, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Nobody has ever proved that the Yeti exists, but climbers have reported giant footprints for many years. In 1951 a British climber on an Everest expedition photographed huge prints in the snow, and in 1960 Edmund Hillary even led an expedition that went looking for evidence. Bigfoot is a similar legend, but from the forests of North America.
Photo: Ipipipourax, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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