#31 Nepal: Twenty Hours By Bus

I think one of the most remarkable things about Nepal is that how it's changed so much over a lifetime, you might say, sort of 70, 75 years.

If you go back to 1950, 51, it's pretty much a completely closed country.

Apart from supplying Gurkhas for the British army, Nepal really is very much a closed kingdom.

And from a point of view of Christian mission, there were no registered Christians.

There's no real existing church.

There probably were some, I don't know, but it didn't really exist.

And And Nepal then sort of opened up a little bit after that period.

Various sort of attempts at democracy and rolling back on that a little bit.

And then you get the Maoist insurgency, the Maoist guerrillas in the 1990s and all sorts of political turmoil over that period.

It's still a monarchy, a Hindu kingdom.

Up until 2000, well, 2008, but before that, 2001, one of the most significant events was the year when the Crown Prince Dependra killed several members of the royal family before shooting himself.

It's a tragic event and very shocking outside of the country, but mostly within the country.

This left the country in a great deal of turmoil.

A peace deal was done.

by about 2006, which led to Nepal becoming a republic.

That's where it is now.

That led to quite an openness.

I think particularly until about, well, I think about 2017, about the year you went steam, which is I think the year when they brought in some of these, um, they brought in this anti-conversion law rather than they have in a lot of the places in India.

But it's still a majority Hindu country, 80% Hindu, 8% Buddhist.

Yeah, the majority of the country, certainly still Hindu, and perhaps this renewed opposition to Christianity, perhaps there's echoes of the increased Hindu nationalism that you would see in the likes of India, for example, and perhaps you're kind of seeing that.

in Nepal as well.

There's a significant Buddhist minority.

I remember visiting the Monkey Temple whenever I was in Kathmandu, this huge towering stupa at the top of quite a number of steps.

And it's called the Monkey Temple because there's lots of monkeys that live there.

There's still a lot of Buddhists in the country, but as you say, Hinduism is the majority.