Mahottari Districtमहोत्तरी जिल्ला

Mahottari is the smallest of Madhesh Province's eight districts at 1,002 km², wedged between Dhanusha to the east and Sarlahi to the west, with India's Bihar state along its southern edge. Its headquarters Jaleshwar, a border bazaar town beside the historic city of Janakpur, takes its name from the Jaleshwarnath Mahadev temple — "Jaleshwar" means "God in water", for the Shiva linga that sits submerged in its sanctum. The district packs 706,994 people (2021) onto its plain at 706 persons per km², making it one of the most crowded districts in the country.

Maithili is the mother tongue of 70.9 percent of residents, followed by Magahi (11.0 percent), Urdu (6.3 percent) and Nepali (5.6 percent); Yadavs (15.7 percent) and Muslims (15.2 percent) are the largest communities, and Hinduism (82.7 percent) and Islam (15.6 percent) the dominant faiths. Mahottari's literacy rate of 59.8 percent (aged 5+) is the second-lowest of Nepal's 77 districts, ahead of only neighbouring Rautahat — a statistic at the centre of any honest account of education in the Tarai. The district's 15 local levels comprise ten municipalities and five rural municipalities, and the economy remains overwhelmingly agricultural.

Mahottari's north holds one of Nepal's most strategic crossroads: Bardibas, where the 160-km BP Highway descending from Dhulikhel through Sindhuli — the shortest road link between Kathmandu and the Tarai — meets the East–West (Mahendra) Highway. The district is also the inland end of Nepal's only railway: the original line was driven into Mahottari's forests in colonial-era times to haul timber to India, and the rebuilt broad-gauge Jaynagar–Janakpur line re-entered the district in July 2023 when services were extended through Bhangaha to Bijalpura, with Bardibas as the planned terminus.