Dang Nepal

Dang, Nepal

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Dang (दाङ्ग) is the most developed district and commercial center of Rapti Zone. Originally the zonal capital used to be in Dang. Ghorahi and Tulsipur are the main commercial hubs for whole Rapti zone. Because this district has two wide, low elevation Inner Tarai valleys it has better transportation and communication facilities than the four other districts of Rapti Zone (Pyuthan, Salyan, Rolpa and Rukkum).

The two inner terai valleys making up most of Dang District are called Dang and Deukhuri. If one were to travel north from the edge of the Indo-Gangeatic Plain at Nepal's border with India, one would first climb gradually through a forested alluvial belt, then more steeply to about 1,000 meters to cross one branch of the Siwalik Range. Descending less steeply down the northern side, the agricultural Deukhuri Valley would be traversed for about ten kilometers, crossing the westward-flowing Rapti River and Nepal's main east-west highway.

At the northern edge of Deukhuri valley a second, slightly higher branch of the Siwalik Range would be crossed, then Dang Valley would be reached and traversed for 15 or 20 kilometers. Dang is about a hundred meters higher than Deukhuri and is drained to the west by the Babai. Several spur roads from the east-west highway cross the hills into Dang, which is the more populated and developed of the two valleys.

Finally from the northern edge of Dang Valley there would be a steep 1,500 meter climb to the crest of the Mahabharat Lekh that is the northern border of Dang where the hill districts Pyuthan, Rolpa and Sallyan begin.

The Dang and Deukhuri valleys were originally a malarial belt mainly populated by the Tharu ethnic group that had lived there long enough to develop resistance, apparently via the Sickle Cell Disease trait, and to develop architectural and behavioral countermeasures.

The use of DDT for mosquito suppression around 1960 opened the district to colonization by land-hungry settlers from the Middle Hills, who took land away from the Tharu by various stratagems and often reduced them to sharecroppers. Tharu resentment and resistance has made them recruitable by the Maobadi movement and there have been many significant guerilla attacks on police, military, and government developments.