Dolakha District


Dolakha, often known as Dolkha or Dholkha, a part of Bagmati Pradesh, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, with Charikot as its district headquarters, covers an area of and has a population of 204,229 in 2001 and 186,557 in 2011. It is a district with a strong religious affiliation. It is popularly known amongst most Nepalese for the temple of Dolakha Bhimeshawor.
The name Dolkha arose from the Sherpa community. In the Sherpa´s language "DO" means stone, "LA" means in, and "KHA" means face which means "Face in Stone".

Bhimeshwar Temple

The Bhimeshwar temple is located in Dolakha Bazar of Bhimeshwar. The main statue of this temple is God Bhim. Bhimsen, Bhimeshwar, or Bhim of Dolakha is noted as one of the most popular throughout the country. He was the second prince of Panch Pandav and notably worshiped by the traders or merchandisers as their god. In Dolakha, the roofless temple constitutes the idol of Bhimsen, which is triangular in shape and made of rough stone. The idol in the temple is said to resemble three different gods: Bhimeshwar in the morning, Mahadeva during the day and the Narayana in the evening.
Local legend has it that ages ago, 12 porters coming from elsewhere stopped at this spot and made three stone stoves to cook rice. After a few minutes, it was noticed that one side of the rice grains was cooked but the other side was raw. When the Porter flipped the cooked side up, the cooked rice became raw again when it came in contact with the triangular-shaped black-stone. One of the porters became very angry and stabbed the stone with "Paneu", which cut the stone and out of the cut flowed blood coated with milk. Later they realized that the stone is God Bhim. Worshippers started pouring in to pray to God Bhim. There are many faith-challenging incidents about the Bhimsen of Dolakha. The miraculous things of Bhimsen statue of Dolakha include sweating fluid like drops of warm water. People believe that if any bad incident is happening or going to happen in near future in the country then Bhimsen himself tries to protect his people by warning them through sweating etc.
From the point of view of Shree Bhimeshwar Shivapuran, there was a kingdom of Bhima that was blessed by God Brahma at the side of a mountain peak. The people, who lived in the Bhima's kingdom had to live very sorrowful lives from the Bhima and so they prayed to god Shiva to save their lives. Then God Shiva came from Gaurishanker and killed the king Bhima. According to the history after Bhima's death, the statue of God at that spot was named -Bhimeshwar.
Dolakha is also home to another holy temple - Kalinchowk Bhagawati. It is situated in high mountains at an altitude of about 3842m and the pilgrims are known to walk a long and dangerous route via the mountains to the temple. But, in 2018 the government started a new cable car service for the comfort of the pilgrims. The temple is believed to have strong spiritual power and known to fulfill the prayer of the pilgrims.

Geography and climate

Climate ZoneElevation Range% of Area
Upper Tropical300 to 1,000 meters
1,000 to 3,300 ft.		 1.9%
Subtropical1,000 to 2,000 meters
3,300 to 6,600 ft.		26.2%
Temperate2,000 to 3,000 meters
6,400 to 9,800 ft.		28.5%
Subalpine3,000 to 4,000 meters
9,800 to 13,100 ft.		16.6%
Alpine4,000 to 5,000 meters
13,100 to 16,400 ft.		 9.4%
Nivalabove 5,000 meters17.4%

Demographics

At the time of the 2011 Nepal census, Dolakha District had a population of 186,557. Of these, 65.2% spoke Nepali, 15.8% Tamang, 8.0% Thami, 7.6% Sherpa, 2.3% Jirel, 2.0% Newari and 1.0% Sunuwar as their first language.
32.5% of the population in the district spoke Nepali and 0.6% English as their second language.

Administration

The district consists of 9 Municipalities, out of which two are urban municipalities and seven are rural municipalities. These are as follows:
Prior to the restructuring of the district, Dolakha consisted of the following municipalities and Village development committees: