Chitwan District
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Chitwan District, a western part of Narayani Zone, is one of the seventy-five districts of Nepal, a landlocked country of South Asia. The district, with Bharatpur(seventh largest city of Nepal) as its district headquarters, Bharatpur is the commercial and service center of central south Nepal, it is the merger destination for higher education health and transportation of the region. covers an area of 2,218 km² and has a population (2001) of 472,048.
Narayangarh, on the bank of Narayani River, is the main town with numerous shopping zones where people from all over the district and even from neighboring district come to shop.
Now there are about 40 Village Development Committees (each of which has nine wards or villages) and one sub-Metropolitan city - Bharatpur and a municipality Ratnanagar each of which has more than nine wards or urban areas.
At the foot of the Himalayas, Chitwan is one of the few remaining undisturbed vestiges of the Terai region, which formerly extended over the foothills of Nepal.
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[edit] Origin
Currently there are three stories about the origin of the name Chitwan:
- The dense jungle there (before men started settlements there) was teeming with Cheetahs. And, the word for 'jungle' in Nepali is van. So, the people around started to call that locality as Cheetah-van, which was later modified as Chitwan.
- The dense jungle in the past was teeming with deer, and so they started to call it Chitri-van which gave way to the present word for the district.
- Long ago, the region was reigned by a kings descended from Chitra Vamsa. (Vamsa is a Sanskrit word for dynasty or lineage).
[edit] Industry
Chitwan is very famous in Nepal because of its dominant production of mustard from which mustard oil is produced. This popularity of the mustard plantation in Chitwan is attributed to the predominant soil type of the place. The soil in chitwan is mostly of the type silt. The silty nature of the soil is in turn attributed to the flooding over the ages in the past from the rivers like Gandaki. Chitwan is also profusely spotted with lands with soil type clay which are very good for use as rice fields. Other popular cash-crops in the region are maize and wheat etc. The soil there is also very good for growing various types of vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, radish, potato, broccoli, cucumbers, pumpkins, carrot etc.
Chitwan product 80% of the country poultry industry, and it is also famous for floriculture, Mushrooms cultivation, Bea Forms and Honey production etc.
At present Chitwan's largest business part Narayangarh is less accessible due to the main bus terminal of the city was moved a few kilometers away from the town to the corner of the other part of Bharatpur city, due to previous king's son's anger with the politics of the citizens of the city.This bus terminal is however no longer in use following successful people's movement in 2006. It is believed that Nepali leftist revolutionary leader Prachanda spent his childhood and youth in Chitwan. The present Deputy Prime Minister of Nepal, Amik Sherchan, also hails from Chitwan.
[edit] Geography
It has a particularly rich flora and fauna.
One of the last populations of single-horned Indian Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), Panthers /Leopards, crocodiles, pythons, and several kinds of deer live in the Chitwan National Park, which is also one of the last refuges of the Royal Bengal tiger. Despite the efforts of Chitwan National Park, it has been unable to protect the rhinoceros population from poachers.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Districts of Nepal at statoids.com
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