If you’ve had a chance to look at the world clock to figure out the time difference between your local time and Nepal time, you’ve probably noticed something really unusual. Nepal is “off” by 45 minutes. If it’s 10am in Nashville, it’s 4pm in London — and it’s 9:45 pm in Nepal. Where’d that other 15 minutes go?
To answer this question, you’ve got to go back to the end of the 19th century when world leaders gathered to establish a prime meridian from which all time across the world would be measured. As world travel was expanding, there needed to be some sort of standardized time system to manage the (mostly railway) travel. They selected the Observatory of Greenwich in London as that prime meridian, hence the abbreviation GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time. All time zones are measured off of GMT.
If you’re like me and have been out of high school for (ahem!) a few years, allow me to refresh your memory. A meridian is one of those long lines that divide the Earth from the north pole to the south pole. There are 24 of them in total.
There’s an hour of time difference between each meridian. Some countries fell right on or darn close to a meridian so it was easy to determine which time zone they’d occupy. A few who found themselves in between two meridians decided to set their time 30 minutes apart. But Nepal?
Nepal was about halfway between two meridians, but instead of selecting one or the other or deciding on the 30-minute mark like its neighbor, India, the country’s leaders chose to adopt a 45-minute difference. Hence, Nepal sits at GMT +05:45, and they are in NST, Nepal Standard Time.
There are a few other countries who sit at the 45-minute mark between meridians, so Nepal isn’t totally unique, but this has become a symbol of Nepal’s individuality and pride, no matter how quirky it may be.
And also, they’re 57 years ahead of us. But that’s a different blog post altogether.
Now that you know, let’s reset our watches and go do some trekking in Nepal. Go HERE to see our treks!
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