Nepal forms the watershed of Asia. Landlocked between India and Tibet, it spans terrain from subtropical jungle to the icy Himalaya, and contains or shares eight of the world’s fourteen highest mountains. Its cultural landscape is every bit as diverse a dozen major ethnic groups, speaking as many as fifty languages and dialects, coexist in this narrow, jumbled buffer state, while two of the world’s great religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, overlap and mingle with older tribal Practices.