Bardiya Districtबर्दिया जिल्ला

Bardiya occupies 2,025 km² of the western Tarai between the Karnali river — whose Geruwa branch forms the boundary with Kailali — and the Banke forests to the east, with the Churia (Siwalik) hills walling its north and the Babai river flowing through the headquarters town of Gulariya. The 2021 census counted 459,900 people, up 0.72% per year from 426,576 in 2011; the sex ratio of 89.15 males per 100 females reflects heavy out-migration of working-age men.

Roughly half of Bardiya's people are Tharu, one of the highest shares of any district in Nepal, and the district is a heartland of Tharu language, dress and the Maghi new-year festival; farming — rice, wheat, mustard and lentils on some of the country's most fertile alluvium — remains the mainstay, with the Rajapur "island" between Karnali channels long famous for its indigenous irrigation systems. Like its Naya Muluk neighbours Banke, Kailali and Kanchanpur, Bardiya was ceded to the East India Company after the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814–16 and returned to Nepal in 1860 in recognition of Jang Bahadur Rana's assistance during the Indian rebellion.

The northern half of the district is Bardiya National Park — at 968 km² the largest national park in the Tarai, established in 1988 after earlier protection as a royal hunting reserve. Quieter and wilder than Chitwan, it harbours Nepal's second-largest Bengal tiger population alongside greater one-horned rhinos translocated from Chitwan since 1986, wild Asian elephants, swamp deer, gharial crocodiles and Gangetic dolphins in the Karnali; the NTNC's Bardia Conservation Program has worked in the park and its buffer-zone villages since 1994, and the tourist gateway is Thakurdwara in Thakurbaba Municipality. A separate small conservation area at Khairapur near Gulariya protects Nepal's last wild blackbuck herd.