Why Nepal begins in Gorkha

Before 1768, "Nepal" meant the Kathmandu Valley and very little else. In Newar it was Nepal Mandala, and it held three rival kingdoms — Kantipur (Kathmandu), Lalitpur (Patan) and Bhadgaon (Bhaktapur). The country that now carries the name took it from a king born on this ridge, in a hill state that at the time nobody would have picked as a future capital.

What Gorkha was in 1743

Gorkha was founded in 1559 by Dravya Shah. It was one of the Chaubisi Rajya, the two dozen or so small kingdoms of the central hills, and it stayed small for the better part of two centuries. Its territory ran from the Marsyangdi river in the west to the Trishuli in the east. Its name comes from Gorakhnath, the Nath yogi whose shrine sits below the palace.

The palace on the ridge was built around 1610 under Ram Shah, who reigned from 1606 to 1636. Ram Shah is remembered less for conquest than for standardising weights, measures and interest rates, and for a reputation for fair judgment that produced the saying "if you don't get justice, go to Gorkha."

Prithvi Narayan Shah was born in that palace on 7 January 1723. His father, Nara Bhupal Shah, died in 1743, and Prithvi Narayan took the throne on 3 April 1743, aged twenty.

The campaign east

He went for Nuwakot first, because Nuwakot sat on the trade route between the Kathmandu Valley and Tibet. The first attempt, in 1743, failed. He took it on 26 September 1744.

What followed was less a march than a slow strangling. Rather than assault the valley head-on, he spent two decades taking the passes and trade routes around it. Makwanpur, the gateway from the south, fell in August 1762; a force sent from Bengal to reverse that was beaten back the following year. By the mid-1760s the valley's commerce with both India and Tibet ran through Gorkhali hands.

Kirtipur, a fortified Newar town on a ridge southwest of Kathmandu, cost him three attempts. The first, in 1757, was a defeat in which his commander Kalu Pande was killed. The second, in 1764, was also repulsed — his brother Surpratap Shah was hit in the eye by an arrow and lost it, and the Gorkhalis withdrew. The third attempt succeeded when a Lalitpur noble let them into the town. Sources disagree on the date: some place it in March 1766, others in 1767.

What happened next is the ugliest episode of the campaign. After the town surrendered, Prithvi Narayan ordered the mutilation of its inhabitants — noses and lips cut off. The account comes from the Italian Capuchin missionary Father Giuseppe, who was in the valley at the time, and is echoed in Nepali sources; one figure given is 865 people. The historian John Whelpton has pointed out that the Capuchins had reason to dislike Shah, so the scale is debated. That it happened at all is not seriously in doubt in Kirtipur, where it is still remembered.

In 1767 Jaya Prakash Malla of Kathmandu asked the East India Company for help. A force of about 2,400 under Captain George Kinloch marched north from Patna in August and was defeated near Sindhuli Gadhi on 6 November 1767. It withdrew to Janakpur.

Kathmandu fell the following year, on 25 September 1768, the day of Indra Jatra, while the city was mid-festival. There was barely a fight — one account puts the dead on both sides at twenty to twenty-five. Jaya Prakash Malla escaped to Patan. Patan fell on 6 October 1768, Bhaktapur in November 1769. Prithvi Narayan moved his capital from Gorkha to Kathmandu, and the valley's old name spread outward over everything he had taken.

He died on 11 January 1775 at Devighat in Nuwakot, his fifty-second birthday. Weeks earlier, ill, he had dictated the Divya Upadesh to his court at Nuwakot — the counsel containing his description of the country as "a yam between two boulders."

What is still here

The 2015 earthquake began in this district: magnitude 7.8, 25 April, epicentre at Barpak. It cracked the palace. Reconstruction started under contract in December 2017, missed its 2019 deadline and two extensions, and was roughly 80 percent done by mid-2021. By April 2023 the main palace, Upallo Kot, Tallo Kot, the Gorakhnath temple and several smaller structures were reported finished, with the Kalika temple retrofit around 85 percent complete. The complex has been on Nepal's UNESCO tentative list since May 1996.

Standing in Gorkha Bazaar, the ridge is directly above you. The stairway is about 1,500 stone steps and takes most people 45 minutes to an hour; a road also runs round to a car park below the northern gate. At the top: the palace, the Kalika temple in the western section (general visitors view it from the terrace rather than entering), and the Gorakhnath cave shrine a short way down the southern side, seen through a lattice door. Leather — shoes, belts — is not permitted inside the complex. Twenty minutes further up is Upallokot, the old lookout point at about 1,520 metres, with Manaslu, Himalchuli and Ganesh Himal to the north on a clear morning.