Nepal is between India and China (including the Chinese Autonomous Region of Tibet).

Nepal is the location of eight of the world's highest peaks.

The highest point in Nepal is Mount Everest (8,848 metres).

Mount Everest (Sagarmatha), on the border of Nepal and Tibet, is the highest peak in the world.

Kanchenjunga, the world's third highest peak (8,586 m), is also in Nepal.

Prithvi Narayan Shah unified the independent States of the Kathmandu Valley in 1768.

The unified country was known as the Gorkha Kingdom. Gurkha, the name for soldiers from the region, was derived from the name.

Kantipur (City of Glory), the name of a Nepalese daily newspaper, was the original name of Kathmandu.

The Shahs came into conflict with the British in India in the early nineteenth century (the Anglo-Nepalese War 1814-16).

For over a century, the British maintained the only foreign diplomatic presence in Kathmandu.

In 1846 Jung Bahadur Rana established a line of hereditary Prime Ministers which lasted until 1951.

In 1951 the sovereignty of the Nepalese crown was restored and the Nepalese Congress Party formed a government.

Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa from Nepal, and Edmund Hillary, from New Zealand, became the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest (1953).

From early 1996, insurgency, known as the People's War, was organized by the [Maoist] Communist Party of Nepal.

A General Strike took place throughout Nepal in April 2001.

At the beginning of June 2001, it was reported that Crown Prince Dipendra shot and killed members of his family, including his mother and father (King Birendra), his brother and sister, an uncle, and several aunts. Following the shooting, Prince Dipendra shot himself, dying two days later. His uncle (Gyanendra) was crowned King of Nepal.

In February 2005 the king declared a state of emergency and assumed direct control of the country. The state of emergency ceased on 30 April 2005.

Weeks of protests against direct rule by the king ended in April 2006.

In May 2006 the Parliament of Nepal voted to restrict the king's political powers.

A decision to abolish the monarchy was made by parliament in December 2007; the following year Nepal became a republic.

Nepal has suffered a series of natural disasters: floods in 2019 and 2021 and an avalanche in 2021; there was also an earthquake on 9 November 2022.

Following the 3 November 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Nepal, hundreds of aftershocks were felt intermittently (2023).