Simikot is one town holding two cultures. The lower bazaar beside the airstrip is largely Khas and Hindu, Nepali-speaking and oriented south. The stone village above it is Lama, or Bhotia, Tibetan Buddhist and oriented north. Fifteen minutes of climbing separates them. Very little else about them matches.
Why Simikot is two settlements rather than one
The lower town exists because the runway does, and it holds what a district headquarters needs. The buildings are concrete and corrugated iron, the signboards are in Nepali, and the working language is Nepali.
The upper village is older and was there first. Flat-roofed houses of mud and dry stone are stacked stepwise up the slope, so that one household roof is the yard of the household above it. Prayer flags, lungta, run from poles and rooflines. Carved mani walls line the paths between the houses. The people living here are Lama, also called Bhotia, of Tibetan cultural descent, and they are Buddhist.
The walk between the two takes a quarter of an hour and is the single most instructive thing a visitor can do in Simikot. Below is how Nepal administers Humla. Above is what Humla was before that administration arrived, and largely still is once you go north of the town. Our Humla district guide sets out the geography this division sits on.
Who lives in Humla, and where
The district divides broadly along altitude and along the river. In the southern and lower valleys, from Sarkegad up through the Adanchuli side, the population is predominantly Khas: Nepali-speaking Hindu households of the hill caste groups, farming terraced land, keeping the Nepali lunisolar calendar. In the north, from roughly Simikot upward through Yalbang, Yangar, Muchu, Yari and into the Limi valley, the population is predominantly Bhotia, Tibetan-speaking and Buddhist.
That split is not a modern administrative line. It follows what the land will grow and what the trade routes were. The southern valleys are low enough for terraced grain and for a second crop; the northern ones are high, dry and pastoral, and their historical economy ran north over the passes into Tibet rather than south into Nepal. The old trans-Himalayan salt trade is the reason a village at 3,800 m in Nepal has always been better connected to Purang than to Kathmandu.
Simikot is where the two systems overlap, because it is the administrative seat for both and the airhead for both. It is not the only place they meet, but it is the place where a visitor can see it happening without walking for a week.
| Marker | Lower Humla, broadly Khas | Upper Humla, broadly Lama or Bhotia |
|---|---|---|
| Language at home | Nepali | Tibetan dialects of the Humla valleys |
| Religion | Hindu, with local deity worship alongside it | Tibetan Buddhism, with Nyingma and Kagyu foundations in the district |
| Religious building | Temple and shrine, often at a confluence or a spring | Gompa, chorten, mani wall, prayer flag |
| House | Stone and mud with a pitched slate or metal roof | Flat-roofed mud and dry stone, stacked stepwise, roof used as yard and threshing floor |
| Staple grain | Millet, buckwheat, maize, rice where it can be bought | Naked barley, buckwheat, millet, potato |
| Calendar | Nepali lunisolar, Bikram Sambat | Tibetan lunisolar |
| Livestock | Goats, buffalo at lower altitude, oxen for ploughing | Yak and yak crossbreeds, sheep, goats, horses |
| Historical trade axis | South, to Kalikot, Bajura and the Tarai | North, over the passes to the Tibetan plateau |
Language: what is spoken, and where the switch happens
Nepali is the language of the bazaar, the offices, the schools and every official interaction in the district. It is the language of the Khas households of southern Humla as a mother tongue, and it is the second language of almost everyone in the north. A visitor who has a few phrases of Nepali will get through Humla end to end.
In the upper village and everywhere north of Simikot, the language spoken between neighbours is a Tibetan dialect. It is not identical to the Tibetan of Lhasa and it is not uniform across the valleys; villages a day apart differ. Nepali is learned at school, and the older a person is, the less of it they are likely to have.
The historical depth here is worth knowing. Nepali itself began as the Khas language of these western hills, in the Sinja valley over in Jumla, and spread east with the Khas Malla kingdom that once ruled this whole region. The Nepali spoken in Humla is not an import from Kathmandu. It is closer to where the language started than the standard form is.
Religion in daily practice, temple below and gompa above
What a visitor actually sees is architecture and habit rather than doctrine. In the south there are small stone temples and shrines, frequently sited at a river confluence or a spring, with a trident, a bell and vermilion. Households keep a shrine corner. Local deity worship runs alongside the recognisable Hindu pantheon and is often the more active of the two at village level.
In the north the visible religion is Tibetan Buddhist and it is on every path. Mani walls carved with the six-syllable mantra sit at the entrance and exit of settlements. Chortens mark passes, bridges and boundaries. Prayer flags are strung where the wind is strongest, which is to say almost everywhere. Households keep an altar room, and the monastery is a working institution rather than a monument.
Two rules cover almost all of the etiquette. Pass a mani wall, a chorten or a monastery with the structure on your right, walking clockwise, and do not climb on one. Ask before photographing an interior, a monk or a ceremony, and accept a refusal without negotiation. The history of Buddhism in Nepal explains how the northern belt of the country came to look like this while the hills below it did not.
Houses, dress and what you can read from the path
The flat roof is the clearest tell in the north, and it is functional rather than stylistic. There is little rain north of Simikot, so a pitched roof solves a problem that does not exist, while a flat one gives a household a dry working surface for threshing, drying and storing fodder above the snow line of the yard. Winter fuel is stacked on it. In monsoon 2026 the roofs above Simikot were in use every dry hour of the day.
Dress splits the same way, though far less than it used to. In the northern villages heavy woollen outer robes, wide sashes and felt or hide boots are working clothes for older people and for anyone out with animals, and silver and coral ornament is worn by women on formal occasions. In the bazaar, and on almost everybody under thirty in either half of the town, the clothing is the same synthetic outdoor kit sold in every hill town in Nepal.
Wool is the constant across both halves and always has been. Spinning and weaving are ordinary household work in Humla rather than a craft revival, and the wool worked in a Humla house is generally wool from that house.
Food as a marker of which Humla you are in
Ask what is in the pot and you generally know where you are standing. In the south the meal is dal bhat where rice can be had and dhido where it cannot, with fermented and dried greens alongside. In the north it is more likely to be a barley or millet base, thick soup, and salted butter tea rather than sweet milk tea.
The two kitchens have converged a long way since subsidised rice began arriving, and the grains that used to define the difference are now the ones under most pressure. That is a subject of its own: what Humla actually grows and eats sets out the millet economy, the barley, the walnuts and what the rice has displaced.
Caste, class and who holds which job
Caste is a live structure in southern Humla as it is throughout the Nepali hills. Thakuri and Chhetri households hold most of the land and most of the local political weight; Dalit households supply the metalwork, tailoring and much of the daily wage labour, and remain materially poorer under a system that is illegal and still operating. Nothing about being a visitor exempts you from noticing it.
The northern villages are not caste-organised in the same way, but they are not flat either. Standing there runs on land, livestock, trading history and monastic connection, and households differ considerably in all four. The idea that upper Humla is somehow outside hierarchy is a visitor idea rather than a local one.
Across both halves the largest single earner is not agriculture. It is the caterpillar fungus harvest that empties the high villages every early summer, and the labour migration that empties them again the rest of the year. The yarsagumba economy covers what that money does to a highland district, and the same cash reaches households at both ends of the district.
How the divide is changing
Three things are shifting it. School is the first and the strongest: education happens in Nepali, so every child in upper Humla now grows up bilingual in a way their grandparents did not, and the flow runs one way. The second is the phone. Coverage reaches Simikot and patches of the corridor, and a village with a signal is connected to Nepalgunj and to Kathmandu on the same terms as anywhere else in the country.
The third is the road. Until July 2025 Humla had no road connection to the national network at all; the last gap was closed by a Nepal Army Bailey bridge over the Chuwa Khola at Kharpunath. That track is unpaved, single-lane, cut from cliff and closed by weather, and flights into Simikot remain the dependable way in. But it exists, and what arrives on it is cheaper than what arrives by aircraft. A district whose two halves were economically oriented in opposite directions is now, slowly, being pulled the same way.
What has not changed is the physical fact underneath the whole thing. Above Simikot the land will not grow rice and it will not grow a second crop, and the households up there still keep yak and still burn dung and juniper. Culture in Humla follows altitude before it follows anything else, and altitude is the one variable the road does not touch.
Visiting both halves without causing offence
Walk the upper village slowly and greet people. Nobody is being paid to be looked at, and the paths between the houses are private space in every practical sense even though they are not fenced. Keep to the main lines through the settlement, do not step onto roofs, and if you would not photograph it through a window at home, do not photograph it here.
In the bazaar the etiquette is ordinary Nepali hill-town etiquette. Eat where local people eat, buy your supplies there rather than carrying everything from Kathmandu, and take the time to have the same conversation twice. Humla sees a great many people pass through it at speed and remarkably few who stop, and being one of the few who stops is worth more here than anywhere else on the corridor.
Before you travel. Humla is a restricted border district and conditions change without notice. Roads close, flights are cancelled, permit rules and fees are revised, and the Hilsa crossing opens and shuts to different categories of traveller. Confirm the current position with the District Administration Office in Simikot, the Department of Immigration, or a registered local operator before you commit to a route.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Lama mean in Humla?
In Humla, Lama is used as a community name for the Tibetan-descended Buddhist population of the northern valleys, alongside the older term Bhotia. It is not being used in its strict religious sense of a Buddhist teacher. A household described locally as Lama is a Buddhist household of Tibetan cultural descent, whether or not anyone in it is ordained.
What language do people speak in Simikot?
Nepali in the lower bazaar, offices and schools, and a Tibetan dialect between neighbours in the upper village and everywhere north of the town. Nepali will carry you through the whole district, because it is taught in every school. English is understood by some younger people in Simikot and rarely elsewhere.
Is Humla Hindu or Buddhist?
Both, split geographically. The southern and lower valleys are predominantly Hindu and Nepali-speaking; the northern valleys from around Simikot upward are predominantly Tibetan Buddhist. Simikot itself contains both, which is why the town is the clearest place in the district to see the division.
Can visitors enter a gompa in upper Humla?
Usually yes, with permission asked at the door and a donation left. Walk clockwise, remove your shoes where others have, do not point your feet at an altar or an image, and do not photograph the interior or a ceremony without being told it is acceptable. A refusal is a refusal and should not be pressed.
How high is Simikot?
About 2,910 m. The upper stone village sits above the bazaar and the runway, so it is a little higher again. Both halves are high enough that arriving by air from Nepalgunj, which is close to sea level, is a serious altitude gain in one morning and needs rest days before anything strenuous.
Is caste discrimination visible to a visitor in Humla?
In the southern valleys, yes, if you pay attention to who does which work, who eats where and which households sit at the edge of a settlement. Caste discrimination is illegal in Nepal and remains an operating social structure in the western hills. A visitor is not in a position to change it and is in a position to avoid reinforcing it.
Has the new road changed life in Humla yet?
Partly. Goods arriving by road are cheaper than goods arriving by aircraft, which matters immediately to households in Simikot and along the corridor. But the track is unpaved, single-lane and seasonal, so it does not yet function as reliable year-round access, and flights remain the dependable way in and out of the district.
Where can I see both cultures in a single day?
Simikot itself. Spend a morning in the lower bazaar and an afternoon walking the upper village and the paths above it. If you have a second day, walk out toward Buraunse to the west or up to the Lagnapau viewpoint north of the runway, both of which put you in country that is culturally northern within a couple of hours of the airstrip.