Gorkha Districtगोरखा जिल्ला

Gorkha is where modern Nepal began. The hilltop Gorkha Durbar, palace-fortress of the Shah dynasty, was the birthplace of Prithvi Narayan Shah, who launched the unification of Nepal from this small hill kingdom beginning with the capture of Nuwakot in 1744; the name of the Gurkha soldiers derives from Gorkha. The Manakamana temple in the district's south-east, believed to grant the wishes of its pilgrims, is one of Nepal's busiest shrines and has been reached since 1998 by the country's first commercial cable car, rising from Kurintar on the Prithvi Highway.

At 3,610 km² Gorkha is the largest district of Gandaki Province, stretching from subtropical valleys below 500 m on the Trishuli and Marsyangdi fringes to the summit of Manaslu (8,163 m), the world's eighth-highest mountain. The Budhi Gandaki, Chepe, Daraudi and Marsyangdi rivers drain its long north–south ridges. Northern Gorkha lies inside the Manaslu Conservation Area (1,663 km², declared 1998), whose Nubri, Kutang and Tsum valleys are home to Tibetan-origin Buddhist communities and centuries-old monasteries; the semi-restricted Manaslu Circuit and Tsum Valley treks have made it one of Nepal's fastest-growing trekking destinations.

The 2021 census counted 251,027 people, down from 271,061 in 2011, with Gurung, Magar, Brahmin-Chhetri, Newar and Dalit communities spread over 11 local levels. Gorkha was the epicentral district of the 25 April 2015 earthquake — the Mw 7.8 'Gorkha earthquake' nucleated beneath Barpak in today's Barpak Sulikot Rural Municipality, killing almost 9,000 people nationwide and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes; reconstruction dominated the district's public life for the following half-decade. Literacy, at 72.4%, remains the lowest in Gandaki Province, a measure of the remoteness of its northern valleys.