Nepal

From the Buddha's birthplace and the valley of art to a Himalayan federal republic.

Nepal's recorded story runs from the early Kirata and Licchavi rulers of the Kathmandu Valley through the city-state kingdoms of the Mallas, whose artisans made the valley one of Asia's great centres of temple architecture. In its southern Tarai plain lies Lumbini, where the Buddha was born around the 6th century BCE. The modern state was forged by the Gorkha king Prithvi Narayan Shah, who conquered the valley in 1768–69 and unified dozens of hill principalities. Never formally colonised, Nepal endured a century of hereditary Rana rule before a series of democratic upheavals abolished the monarchy in 2008 and produced a federal democratic republic, ratified by a new constitution in 2015.