Nepal is a landlocked nation in South Asia. Its official name is the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. It is mostly located in the Himalayas, but also includes sections of the Indo-Gangetic Plain, bordering Tibet of China to the north and India to the south, east, and west, with the Siliguri Corridor separating it from Bangladesh and Bhutan. Nepal's landscape is diversified, with fertile plains, subalpine wooded hills, and eight of the world's ten largest mountains, including Mount Everest, the highest point on the planet. Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, and multi-cultural country, with Nepali serving as the official language. Kathmandu is the capital and biggest city of Nepal.
The word "Nepal" first appears in documents from the Indian subcontinent's Vedic period, the era in ancient Nepal when Hinduism, the country's major religion, was created. Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was born at Lumbini, southern Nepal, around the middle of the first millennium BC. Northern Nepal was heavily influenced by Tibetan culture. The Indo-Aryan culture is interwoven with the Kathmandu Valley, which was the headquarters of the affluent Newar confederacy known as Nepal Mandala. The valley's merchants controlled the Himalayan branch of the historic Silk Road. The cosmopolitan area produced distinctive traditional art and architecture. The Gorkha Kingdom succeeded in uniting Nepal by the 18th century. The Shah dynasty created the Kingdom of Nepal and eventually struck an alliance with the British Empire via its dominant Rana dynasty. The nation was never colonized but instead acted as a buffer between Imperial China and British India. Parliamentary democracy was established in 1951, however, it was suspended twice by Nepalese rulers, in 1960 and in 2005. The civil war in Nepal in the 1990s and early 2000s concluded in the foundation of a secular republic in 2008, thereby terminating the world's last Hindu monarchy.
Nepal's 2015 Constitution establishes the nation as a secular federal parliamentary republic split into seven provinces. Nepal was admitted to the United Nations in 1955, while friendship treaties with India and China were inked in 1950 and 1960, respectively. Nepal is a founding member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which hosts the permanent secretariat. Nepal also belongs to the Non-Aligned Movement and the Bay of Bengal Initiative. The Nepalese Armed Forces are the fifth-largest in South Asia, and are known for their Gurkha past, notably during World Wars I and II, and have been a substantial contribution to United Nations peacekeeping missions.