Located between China and India, Nepal is all along the Himalayas. These high mountains offer a range of beautiful landscapes with the eight highest summits of the world. Nepal gets an important profit from the hiking tourism, which represents at least 10% of the GDP of the country. Although well exploited by the country, its environment is a difficult aspect for its development with a complex topography and a rough climate. Seasons rhythm the country’s activities with dry winter and summer marked by important monsoons.
The diversity of its ethnic groups, its castes, and its languages contribute to the richness of the culture of this country. Cults and religions take an important part of the Nepalese daily life; Hinduism, practiced by the majority of the population, has been coexisting with Buddhism for centuries. Architecture, culture and religion are tightly connected in Nepal, where the most beautiful wood or rock sculptures mainly stand in temples and monasteries. Nowadays cities and villages still come alive at the rhythm of religious festivities.
With 29 million inhabitants, more than 85% of the population live in rural area. Nepal is divided in 75 districts, then in «VDCs» (Village Development Committee) who correspond to municipalities. Villages’ structure can differ from one place to another. Some are composed by groups of houses, with a dense typology. Other are more scattered, with houses separated from each other. Time perception is felt differently: it is common to have to walk for a few hours to walk across a village. These villages are sometimes badly connected or even not connected at all to the main cities, which is why education has been hard to access for a long time. Nowadays an important improvement is visible, with 84% of alphabetisation in the young population.
Nepal has been benefiting of its geographic situation between its bordering countries for a long time, being a natural stop for merchants and travellers. Today, it is left behind as compared to its neighbours. There are many challenges to development: drinkable water, electricity support, communication infrastructure, wastewater management, infrastructure for transportation… However, these last years, some aspects of the development have been considerably improved. Electricity support became constant in the major part of the country and communication infrastructure have improved even in really retreated villages.
During the last ten years, Nepal has got through economic and political crisis, but its biggest challenge is to recover from the terrible earthquake that has devastated part of the country on 25 April and 12 May 2015. In the area around Kathmandu, earthquakes have destroyed a huge amount of constructions and caused more than 9000 deaths.
In the aftermath of this disaster, international assistance has worked together to rebuild the country. The outcome was positive but not to the scale of the real needs. Two years after, the mains NGOs are leaving to other assignments, but the damage is still present.
