Here are the Himalayas, the “Home of the Gods.” Here, too, is Mount Everest, the world’s greatest peak, and no less colorful that fiction, has made Nepal one of the world’s most incredible countries, a geological wonder, an ethnological conundrum.

No one taking a daytime flight into Nepal can fail to marvel at the land below. There are the flat, checkered plains of the lowland Terai, hardwood jungles, the yellowish-red farmlands of the inner Terai, the plunging flanks of the Mahabharat range, the deep gorges of turbulent Himalayan rivers, and layer upon layer of foothills blued by distance. Beyond, the Himalayas rise to unbelievable heights along the northern horizon.
This is the home of 29 million Nepalis. These people, their language and their customs, are as diverse as the terrain. From mountain to mountain, valley to valley, plateau to plain, ethnic group vary as much as the climate.

Squeezed between the vastness of China to the north and India to the south, east and west, Nepal is the world’s most steep staircase to the frozen heights of ‘the Roof of the World.’ Within a single day, one can fly closely past Everest and its neighboring summits, pause in the valley on Kathmandu, then descend to the plains and ride elephants through tropical jungle and view one horn rhinos and wild tigers.