Saptari Districtसप्तरी जिल्ला

Saptari is the easternmost district of Madhesh Province and its largest by area, covering 1,363 km² from the Churia foothills (the district rises from 68 to 457 metres) down to the Bihar border. Its defining feature is the Sapta Koshi, Nepal's biggest river, which forms the eastern boundary; the Koshi Barrage near Hanumannagar regulates the river as it sweeps into India, and in high monsoons — as in July 2020, when flow passed 256,000 cusecs and 38 of the barrage's gates had to be opened — the Koshi remains one of South Asia's most dangerous flood rivers, with Saptari settlements like Tilathi Koiladi squarely in its path.

The district's eastern floodplain holds part of the Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve, which in 1987 became Nepal's first Ramsar site and protects the country's last population of wild water buffalo (arna) along with one of Asia's great waterbird concentrations; the reserve's grasslands and marshes are shared with neighbouring Sunsari and Udayapur districts. South of the headquarters Rajbiraj — one of the Tarai's oldest municipal towns — the Chhinnamasta Bhagawati temple near the border is a celebrated shakti pith that draws pilgrims from both Nepal and India, busiest during Dashain.

Saptari counted 706,255 people in 2021 at 518 per km², the second-lowest density in Madhesh after Parsa. Maithili is the mother tongue of 80.5 percent of residents, with Saptari's Tharu community (11.6 percent of the population by language) the largest in the province; literacy, at 67.7 percent of those aged 5+, is the province's second-highest. The district's 18 local levels split evenly into nine municipalities and nine rural municipalities, and its economy is built on paddy farming, fisheries in the Koshi floodplain and remittances.