Nepal at a Glance: Facts About Nepal (Country Code, Time Zone & More)

If you searched for a quick answer, here it is. Nepal is a sovereign, landlocked country in South Asia, wedged between India to the south, east and west and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China to the north. Its capital and largest city is Kathmandu. The country's official name under its current constitution is the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal (Nepali: Sanghiya Loktantrik Ganatantra Nepal).

Nepal's international dialling (calling) code is +977, assigned by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) under the E.164 numbering plan. Its ISO 3166-1 country codes are NP (two-letter alpha-2), NPL (three-letter alpha-3) and 524 (numeric). Its country-code top-level internet domain is .np. Nepal keeps a single national clock, Nepal Standard Time (NPT), set to UTC+5:45, and the whole country drives on the left-hand side of the road.

The national currency is the Nepalese rupee, ISO currency code NPR and usually written as Rs or रू. Nepali (written in Devanagari script) is the official working language of government. Below, each of these facts is explained in more detail so this page can answer the specific one-line questions people ask by voice and search.

Nepal's country calling code is +977. To phone a Nepali number from abroad you dial your own international access prefix (for example 00 from most of Europe, or 011 from North America), then 977, then the subscriber number without the leading domestic trunk 0. Landlines carry area codes — for example Kathmandu Valley uses 01 — while mobile numbers begin with 9 (commonly 98 or 97). The +977 code has been Nepal's ITU-assigned prefix for decades and is not shared with any other country.

Separately from the phone code, Nepal has a family of ISO 3166-1 country codes used in passports, databases, shipping and software. The alpha-2 code is NP, the alpha-3 code is NPL, and the numeric code is 524. These are distinct systems: +977 is a telephone dialling code from the ITU, whereas NP/NPL come from the International Organization for Standardization. Confusingly, people sometimes call any of these 'the Nepal country code', so it is worth stating all of them together.

For the internet, Nepal's country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) is .np, delegated in the IANA root database and administered locally. Government and educational bodies typically sit under the second-level domains gov.np and edu.np. So the short answer: phone code +977, ISO codes NP and NPL, internet domain .np.

Nepal observes a single time zone across the whole country: Nepal Standard Time (NPT), which is UTC+5:45. This makes Nepal one of only three places on Earth whose clocks sit at a 45-minute offset from Coordinated Universal Time — the others being the Chatham Islands of New Zealand (UTC+12:45) and the unofficial Central Western zone of Australia (UTC+8:45). Nepal does not observe daylight saving time, so the offset is the same all year round.

The unusual :45 offset has a simple explanation. Nepal's standard meridian runs at 86°15′ east longitude, a line that passes near Gaurishankar mountain roughly 100 km east of Kathmandu, and this meridian defines the +5:45 clock. Historically Nepal used Indian Standard Time (UTC+5:30); in 1986 it advanced its clocks by 15 minutes to the current UTC+5:45, giving the country a time that is 15 minutes ahead of India and 15 minutes behind Bangladesh.

In the IANA time zone database used by computers and phones, Nepal is the single zone Asia/Kathmandu. So if you are scheduling a call or a flight, remember that Nepal is not a whole number of hours from most of the world — for example, when it is 12:00 noon UTC it is 17:45 in Kathmandu.

Nepal is a federal democratic republic. It was a monarchy for most of its modern history, but on 28 May 2008 the first Constituent Assembly voted to abolish the 240-year-old Shah monarchy and declared Nepal a republic, ending the reign of King Gyanendra. This followed the People's Movement of 2006 and the peace process that closed a decade-long Maoist insurgency.

The country's governing framework is the Constitution of Nepal, promulgated on 20 September 2015 (3 Ashwin 2072 in the Bikram Sambat calendar). It defines Nepal as a federal democratic republic and restructured the state into seven provinces, together with 753 local governments (metropolitan cities, sub-metropolitan cities, municipalities and rural municipalities). Executive power rests with a Council of Ministers led by the Prime Minister, who is head of government.

The President of Nepal is the head of state and holds a largely ceremonial role. The federal Parliament is bicameral, consisting of the House of Representatives (Pratinidhi Sabha) as the lower house and the National Assembly (Rashtriya Sabha) as the upper house. This structure replaced the older unitary, monarchical system and remains the basis of Nepali government today.

The capital of Nepal is Kathmandu, which is also the largest city and the country's political, economic and cultural hub. The Kathmandu Valley — home to Kathmandu, Lalitpur (Patan) and Bhaktapur — holds seven UNESCO World Heritage monument groups and is the seat of the federal government.

Nepal's currency is the Nepalese rupee (NPR), issued by the central bank, Nepal Rastra Bank. The rupee is divided into 100 paisa, and banknotes carry Mount Everest and other national imagery. The Indian rupee is also widely accepted in some border areas, and the NPR has long been pegged to the Indian rupee, though the two are separate currencies.

According to the National Population and Housing Census 2021 — whose final results were released by the National Statistics Office in March 2023 — Nepal's total population is 29,164,578, of whom about 51 percent are women. The official language of government is Nepali, written in Devanagari script, but the census recognises well over a hundred living mother tongues, reflecting Nepal's deep ethnic and linguistic diversity.

One fact Nepalis take particular pride in: Nepal was never colonised. Unlike almost all of South Asia, it was never part of the British Empire and never came under direct foreign rule. After the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814–1816) and the Treaty of Sugauli, Nepal ceded some territory but retained its sovereignty and independence throughout the colonial era, which is why the country has no 'independence day' from a colonial power.

Despite never being colonised by Britain, Nepal drives on the left-hand side of the road, with right-hand-drive vehicles. This is usually explained by regional consistency with neighbouring India, which adopted left-hand traffic under British rule; keeping the same side made cross-border road traffic and vehicle imports far simpler for Nepal.

So the two facts sit side by side: politically independent and never colonised, yet aligned with its neighbours on the practical matter of which side of the road to drive on. Both are common quiz and search questions, and both answers are firmly established.