Taplejung Districtताप्लेजुङ जिल्ला

Taplejung fills Nepal's far northeastern corner, and at 3,646 km² it is the country's third-largest district — bigger than the rest of Koshi's hill districts combined feel, yet home to just 120,590 people (33/km²). Its land climbs from about 670 m to the 8,586 m summit of Kanchenjunga, the world's third-highest mountain, on the Sikkim border, and the Tamor river cleaves the district in two on its way to the Koshi. The Kanchenjunga Conservation Area, designated in 1997 over 2,035 km² of the high north, protects cultivated land, forests, pastures, glaciers and high-altitude lakes around the massif.

This is Limbu country — 42.6% of the population at the 2021 census — and its most famous shrine fuses traditions: Pathibhara Devi, on a 3,794 m ridge above Phungling, draws Hindu pilgrims from Nepal and India while Limbus revere the site as the seat of Yuma Sammang, their principal deity. The cash economy rests on two pillars: large cardamom, of which the Taplejung hills are a core producing area, and trekking tourism on the long, wild approach to Kanchenjunga Base Camp.

The headquarters is Phungling municipality (often labelled simply 'Taplejung'), the lone urban unit among nine local levels. Like the rest of the eastern mountains the district is slowly losing people (−0.53% a year over 2011–21), and its sex ratio of 101.60 — the highest in Koshi Province — reflects the male in-migration and low out-migration pattern of Nepal's high-mountain districts.