Surkhet Districtसुर्खेत जिल्ला

Surkhet is Karnali's gateway and its most populous district: 2,451 km² centred on the Surkhet Valley, one of Nepal's inner-Tarai duns, with about 42% valley plain, 43% Mahabharat range and the balance forested Siwalik foothills. Birendranagar, at the valley's heart, is both district headquarters and the capital of Karnali Province; its municipality counted 153,863 people in 2021, making it by far the province's largest urban centre. From here the Karnali Highway strikes north to Dailekh, Kalikot and Jumla and the Karnali Corridor reaches on toward Humla, which makes Surkhet the staging post for virtually everything moving into the high districts.

The district's 415,126 people (2021) make up almost a quarter of the province, and its 1.62% annual growth is Karnali's fastest — swelled by migrants from Kalikot, Jumla, Mugu, Jajarkot and Salyan who moved down for services and security, a flow that accelerated after the conflict ended. Chhetris are 31.7% of the population and Magars 17.3%; literacy, at 82.7%, is the highest in the province. Nine local levels — five municipalities and four rural municipalities — administer the district, whose economy combines valley rice farming with administration, trade, transport and a growing service sector around the provincial government.

Surkhet's signature monument is Kakrebihar, a 12th-century stone shikhara temple on a forested hillock outside Birendranagar, revered by Buddhists and Hindus alike and rated by the Department of Archaeology as second only to Lumbini in archaeological significance within the region. Excavations from 2001 yielded some 2,028 artefacts — Buddha images alongside Saraswati and Vishnu — and after a restoration begun in 2004 and restarted in 2015, the temple was rebuilt in its original style from its own inscribed stones in 2021. Bulbule lake in town, the Deuti Bajai temple and rafting on the Bheri river round out the district's visitor draws.