Nepal 🇳🇵

Nepal is an independent state in Southern Asia, and a member of the United Nations. Treaties and official documents call it Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. Government sits in Kathmandu.

It covers 147,181 km², which ranks it 95th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Bangladesh and just ahead of Tajikistan. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is almost exactly the same size as Bangladesh.

It is home to roughly 29.7 million people, placing it 51st of 249 by population — between Ivory Coast above it and Cameroon below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 6th of 9 in size and 6th in population.

Nepal has no coastline of its own, so every ship-borne import and export crosses somebody else's border first. The good news is that the sea is only one frontier away: India and China have coastline, which makes them the obvious routes for freight heading to a port.

That geography has practical consequences. Landlocked countries carry higher freight costs than coastal ones because goods change hands, transport mode and jurisdiction more often, and because a neighbour's road, rail or customs problem becomes Nepal's problem too. It is also why transit agreements with bordering states, and access to their ports, tend to matter more in Nepal's foreign policy than the distance on a map would suggest.

Coastal countries on the border:

• 🇮🇳 India
• 🇨🇳 China

The coordinates the dataset gives are 28.0° N, 84.0° E, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 3,117 km from the equator, in what geographers would call subtropical latitudes.

Algeria, Egypt and Kuwait sit at almost exactly the same latitude on other parts of the globe.

It borders 2 neighbours: China and India. The largest of them by area is China, while the most populous is India. Together those neighbours hold about 2.86 billion people.

This is one of the world's landlocked countries. That is true of 45 of the 249 entries here, so all seaborne trade runs through a neighbour's ports. You can see the full picture on the landlocked countries page.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Nepal ranks 95th of 249 by area and 51st by population. That works out at 0.098% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.36% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Nepal in the size ordering are Bangladesh at 147,570 km² and Tajikistan at 143,100 km², against Nepal's 147,181 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Nepal averages 201 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 73rd of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Spread across 147,181 km², that works out at about 201 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. For comparison, the median entry on this list sits near 91 per square kilometre.

People from Nepal are called Nepalese.

Officially it is monolingual: Nepali. No other entry in this dataset lists Nepali, so on this list it stands alone.

Against Asia as a whole it is the 20th most populous of 50 entries, and it accounts for 1.4% of everyone living in Southern Asia.

Zoom in from the world to Southern Asia and Nepal sits 6th of 9 by population and 6th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Afghanistan just above and Sri Lanka just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

India is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Southern Asia has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇦🇫 Afghanistan
• 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka
• 🇮🇳 India

The Nepalese rupee (NPR) is used only in Nepal among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Nepali is listed for Nepal and for no other entry on this site. A language confined to one country is unusual, and it is normally a sign of long isolation or of deliberate revival.

Money there is the Nepalese rupee (₨, NPR). It is issued for Nepal alone.

Kathmandu is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

Websites there use the .np domain. To phone it from abroad you dial +977. Its ISO codes are np and NPL, which is what most databases and flag files use.

As a sovereign state it is among the 192 UN members listed here. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.