Fun fact#241
Nepal's flag is not rectangular
Nepal is the only country with a non-quadrilateral flag, made of two stacked pennants representing the Himalayas.
Nepal
The only non-rectangular national flag, a time zone offset by 45 minutes, and a mountain that keeps growing.
6 entries · 3 stories, 3 fun facts
Nepal at a glance
The practical numbers, before the stories.
- Capital
- Kathmandu
- Currency
- Nepalese rupee (NPR)
- Official language
- Nepali; more than 120 languages spoken
- Climate
- Subtropical in the Terai lowlands, temperate in the hills, alpine and arctic in the high Himalaya.
- Best time to go
- October–November and March–April
- Time zone
- UTC+5:45
- Driving side
- Left
- Plugs and voltage
- Type C / D / M, 230 V
Worth knowing: One of only a handful of countries with a time zone offset by 45 minutes, and the only one with a non-rectangular flag.
Planning a trip to Nepal
The decisions that determine whether the trip works, whichever country you are going to.
Nepal is the only country with a non-quadrilateral flag, made of two stacked pennants representing the Himalayas. It also runs on UTC+5:45, one of a handful of time zones offset by three quarters of an hour. Everest rises a few millimetres a year and drifts northeast as the Indian plate pushes under Asia; its official height was revised to 8,848.86 m in 2020.
Below: the teahouse ledgers where prices climb with altitude because everything was carried up on somebody's back, and the porter with thirty-two kilos on a headstrap who overtakes you on every climb and asks, politely, whether your bag is really that heavy.
Entries from Nepal
Fun fact#242
Everest grows and shifts
Everest rises a few millimetres a year and drifts northeast as the Indian plate pushes under Asia. Its official height was revised to 8,848.86 m in 2020.
Fun fact#245
Nepal's clock is 45 minutes off
Nepal runs on UTC+5:45, one of only a handful of time zones offset by 45 minutes.
Story#520
The teahouse ledger
Every teahouse on the trek kept a paper ledger, and the prices went up predictably with altitude because everything had been carried on someone's back.
Story#522
Ten days to base camp
The mountain is not the hard part. The hard part is the fourteenth consecutive dinner of dal bhat and the discovery that you would happily eat a fifteenth.
Story#526
A porter's load
He carried thirty-two kilos with a strap across his forehead and overtook us on every climb. At lunch he asked, politely, whether our bags were really that heavy.
Nothing matched that search on this page. Try a shorter word, or browse by destination.
Still deciding?
Nepal is one of 36 countries in the library. Read straight through a continent, or start from the map of everywhere we have written about.