Where Nepal began — the hilltop fortress of the king who unified a nation
Gorkha is a small hill town in central Nepal that occupies one of the most historically significant hilltop sites in the country — the Gorkha Durbar fortress, a 16th-century palace and temple complex perched on a ridge above the town, where Prithvi Narayan Shah was born in 1723 and launched his campaign to unify Nepal's fractious hill kingdoms into a single nation. The name 'Gurkha' — the Nepali soldiers whose reputation became globally famous through British colonial service — comes from this town. Gorkha sits between Kathmandu and Pokhara with Himalayan views north that include Manaslu (8,1…
Gorkha became historically significant when the Shah dynasty produced Prithvi Narayan Shah — the king who, between 1743 and 1775, conquered the valley kingdoms of Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur and forged the Kingdom of Nepal. The Gorkha soldiers who served in the British and later Indian armies from 1814 onward took their name and their reputation from this region's warrior tradition. The Gorkha Durbar (palace) sits on the same ridge as the Gorakhnath cave temple, a site sacred to the Hindu warrior-ascetic tradition.