Nuwakot Districtनुवाकोट जिल्ला

Nuwakot lies northwest of the Kathmandu Valley in the middle hills, with the Trishuli river running through its centre and the Tadi and Likhu tributaries draining its eastern valleys. The district headquarters Bidur and the adjacent bazaar town of Trishuli sit on the river at the foot of the historic Nuwakot ridge, about 70 km from Kathmandu on the road toward Rasuwa and the Chinese border; the northern fringe of the district reaches into Langtang National Park, and the Kakani ridge on its southern rim is a popular Himalayan viewpoint just outside the valley.

The 2021 census counted 263,391 people, down 0.50% per year from 2011 — the familiar pattern of hill out-migration, sharpened by the 2015 earthquake, which hit Nuwakot severely. Terrace agriculture (rice in the Trishuli and Tadi valleys, maize, millet and mustard on the slopes) remains the backbone of the economy, supplemented by livestock and growing vegetable production for Kathmandu. The Trishuli corridor also carries one of Nepal's oldest hydropower legacies, with the early Trishuli and Devighat plants below Bidur.

Nuwakot's place in national history is outsized: Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha captured the town in 1744 as the first major conquest of his unification campaign, and used it as his forward base — and Nepal's de facto capital — for the long encirclement of the Kathmandu Valley. The seven-storey Saat Tale Durbar he built on the ridge, with its surrounding Malla-style temples and the Bhairab shrine, forms the Nuwakot Palace Complex, placed on Nepal's UNESCO World Heritage tentative list in 2008 and restored by the Department of Archaeology after heavy earthquake damage in 2015.