River · Nepal
Karnali
Karnali is the longest river of Nepal and comes from the high plateau of Tibet. It cuts deep valleys through the Himalayas. Much later it joins the Ganges in India.
Picture credit: Rajesh Dhungana (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Gaurav Bhandari (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Sugar.xli (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is the Karnali?
The river starts here: Tibetan plateau near Mount Kailash.
It ends in the Ganges near Chhapra in Bihar.
Countries on the river: Nepal.
The story behind it
The Karnali is older than the mountains it crosses: while the Himalayas were slowly pushed upwards, the river kept sawing its bed deeper, so today it runs through gorges with walls far above the water. In western Nepal many villages have no road, and people cross the river on swinging suspension bridges or in wooden boats. Rafts full of travellers ride the rapids in autumn, when the water turns clear and green. Lower down, the river leaves the mountains and spreads over the flat Terai, where it splits into braided channels full of sand and gravel. Gharials with long thin snouts bask there, and river dolphins sometimes appear in the deeper pools. During the monsoon the Karnali swells enormously and can flood fields and houses on both sides of the border.
Questions children ask
How long is the Karnali?
Which countries does the Karnali flow through?
Its home country is Nepal, where the longest and wildest part of the river lies. Its first water comes from the Tibetan plateau, and later it crosses northern India. There it is known under a different name.
Where does the Karnali end?
It flows into the Ganges near Chhapra in the Indian state of Bihar. From there its water continues eastwards to the Bay of Bengal. So snow from the Himalayas ends up in a warm sea.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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