Nepal is a country of wide sociocultural diversity, while its three physiographic divisions attest its extraordinary geographical variation: from the Terai, or flat river plain of the Ganges in the south, at an altitude of below 300 m, through the central Hill division at 800–4,000 m, to the Himalayan Mountains above 4,000 m in the north containing eight of the world’s ten highest peaks [9]. In July 2011, the country’s population was estimated at almost 30 million [9], with nearly one quarter below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 a day [9].