Nepal first. India and Bhutan close behind. The world, always.
Rural cultures do not stop at borders. The same languages, songs and patterns of migration run across the Himalayan-Gangetic world and travel with its people everywhere.
All seven provinces.
Dedicated field researchers and community correspondents in every province.
Koshi
Home of the Rai and Limbu, whose Mundhum texts are among the oldest living indigenous knowledge systems of the Himalaya. Sherpa country, and Bajjika and Maithili in the Madhesh-Terai plains.
Madhesh
The Maithili and Tharu heartland, sharing a living cultural border with Bihar, and home to communities whose stories are rarely told.
Bagmati
The Kathmandu Valley and Nepal Bhasa, and the peri-urban villages where the dehat is being absorbed by the city in real time.
Gandaki
The heartland of Gurung, Magar and Thakali communities, Mustang's Seke speakers and many of Nepal's best-known folk musicians.
Lumbini
Bhojpuri, Awadhi and Tharu: three languages, three cultures, one province. The home of our Bhojpuri desk.
Karnali
Nepal's most remote and fastest depopulating province, rich in oral tradition and alpine knowledge. A permanent field base.
Sudurpashchim
The far west, among Nepal's most linguistically diverse and least served corners. A dedicated Far West programme.
Every district
A Village Desk of community correspondents filing from their own communities.
India
Not an afterthought, but a natural extension of Nepal's own cultural landscape.
- Bihar: the Bhojpuri, Maithili, Magahi and Bajjika heartland, culturally inseparable from Madhesh and the Terai
- Uttar Pradesh: the Purvanchal belt, heartland of Bhojpuri and Awadhi
- Uttarakhand: Garhwali and Kumaoni hills facing the same rural depopulation
- Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh: Adivasi communities whose cultures are under acute threat
- West Bengal and the Northeast, and the Nepali-speaking communities of Darjeeling, Sikkim and Assam
Bhutan
Deep historical, cultural and linguistic ties, especially among the eastern Himalayan communities of both countries.
The story of the Lhotshampa, the Nepali-speaking community of southern Bhutan, resettled for decades in eastern Nepal and then dispersed across the world, is one of the most significant and least told human stories of the region. It is a major Dehat editorial priority.
The Diaspora Dehat
Wherever Nepali, Bihari and Bhojpuri communities have settled, they carried their village with them: in language, food, festival, music and the stories they tell their children.
- The United Kingdom and Europe: students, professionals and Gurkha veteran communities
- The United States and Canada: growing Nepali and Bhutanese refugee diaspora
- The Gulf: the world's largest concentration of Nepali migrant workers
- Australia, Malaysia and Japan: established student and worker communities