Nepal

Nepal is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly located in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain bordering China's Tibet to the north and India to the south, east and west, while narrowly separated from Bangladesh by the Siliguri corridor. and from Bhutan by the Indian state of Sikkim. Nepal has a diverse geography, including fertile plains, subalpine forest hills, and eight of the ten tallest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multilingual, multi-confessional and multicultural state, the official language of which is Nepali. Kathmandu is the country's capital and largest city.

The name "Nepal" first appears in texts from the Vedic period of the Indian subcontinent, the era in ancient Nepal when Hinduism, the country's predominant religion, was founded. In the middle of the first millennium BC, Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was born in Lumbini in southern Nepal. Parts of northern Nepal have been intertwined with the culture of Tibet. The centrally located Kathmandu Valley is intertwined with Indo-Aryan culture and was the seat of a thriving Newar confederation known as the Nepalese Mandala. The Himalayan branch of the ancient Silk Road was dominated by the traders of the valley. The cosmopolitan region has excellent traditional art and architecture. By the 18th century, the Gorkha Kingdom had achieved the unification of Nepal. The Shah dynasty founded the Kingdom of Nepal and then formed an alliance with the British Empire under the rule of the Rana dynasty of prime ministers. The country was never colonized but served as a buffer state between Imperial China and British India. Parliamentary democracy was introduced in 1951 but was halted twice by Nepalese monarchs, in 1960 and 2005. Nepal's civil war in the 1990s and early 2000s resulted in the establishment of a secular republic in 2008, ending the last Hindu monarchy in the world.

Nepal's constitution, adopted in 2015, affirms Nepal as a secular federal parliamentary republic, divided into seven provinces. It remains the only multi-party, fully democratic country in the world currently ruled by the Communist Party. Nepal was admitted to the United Nations in 1955, and friendship treaties were signed with India in 1950 and China in 1960. Nepal hosts the SAARC Permanent Secretariat, of which he is a founding member. Nepal is also a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Bay of Bengal Initiative. Nepal's armed forces are the fifth largest in South Asia; and are known for their Gurkha history, especially during the World Wars, and have made significant contributions to United Nations peacekeeping operations.