Chitwan Districtचितवन जिल्ला

Chitwan is Bagmati Province's only Inner Tarai district, a broad dun valley in the province's southwestern corner enclosed between the Mahabharat range to the north and the Siwalik (Churia) hills to the south. The Narayani — one of Nepal's deepest and largest rivers — flows along its western edge past Bharatpur, while the Rapti crosses the valley and forms the northern boundary of Chitwan National Park. With 719,859 people in 2021, up 2.07% per year from 2011, Chitwan is the province's second population centre after the Kathmandu Valley and one of the fastest-growing districts in the country.

The valley is the homeland of the indigenous Tharu people, and until the 1950s it was largely malarial forest; malaria eradication and government resettlement programmes then drew settlers from the surrounding hills and transformed Chitwan into one of Nepal's most productive farm belts. It is the country's leading maize-growing area and a major producer of rice, mustard, poultry and honey. Bharatpur, the district headquarters and one of Nepal's six metropolitan cities, has grown into the commercial and service hub of south-central Nepal, known especially for medical institutions such as the B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital and Chitwan Medical College.

Chitwan National Park, established in 1973 as Nepal's first national park and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1984, protects one of the last refuges of the greater one-horned rhinoceros along with Bengal tigers, gharial crocodiles and over 500 bird species. The park and its tourist gateway at Sauraha (in Ratnanagar) anchor one of Nepal's biggest wildlife-tourism economies; the Beeshazar lakes in its buffer zone are a noted bird-watching wetland, and the remote Madi valley lies south of the park against the Indian border.