Almost every workable slope in the Nepali hills has been cut into terraces by hand, over generations. There are two kinds and the distinction runs through everything: bari is the rainfed terrace, slightly sloping, for maize and millet; khet is level and bunded so it can be flooded, and it grows rice. Which one a field is decides what grows there and when.
How a terrace is actually made
With a kodalo, the broad hoe that does most of the digging in Nepal, and with time. Soil is cut from the upper part of a strip and moved down to build the lower part out, until the working surface is flat enough to farm and the vertical face between one level and the next — the riser — is steep enough to stand. Nobody builds a hillside of terraces in a season. They are extended, repaired and inherited.
What holds them is mostly grass. The risers are left under a tight turf that is cut for fodder through the year, with stone facing where the ground is unstable or where a spring emerges. After every monsoon the family walks the field edges and repairs what the rain has taken out, and that annual repair, rather than the planting, is the real recurring labour cost of hill farming.
| Bari | Khet | |
|---|---|---|
| Surface | Slopes gently outward so rain runs off | Level, with a raised bund to hold water in |
| Water | Rainfed only | Irrigated from a channel, and flooded for rice |
| Where | Higher up the slope, often around the house | Lower and gentler ground, near a stream or channel |
| Crops | Maize, finger millet, wheat, mustard, potato, vegetables | Rice in the monsoon, then wheat, barley or a legume |
| Value | The everyday land | Worth considerably more, and divided far more carefully at inheritance |
The year on a hill farm
In the middle hills maize goes into the bari with the pre-monsoon rain in spring and comes off in late summer, with finger millet transplanted in among the standing maize and harvested well into the autumn. The khet works to a different clock: rice is transplanted into flooded, puddled fields in Asar, around late June and July, and cut in October and November. Wheat, barley and mustard follow through the winter and come off in spring.
The rice transplanting is the single biggest working day of the year and the one with a festival attached — Asar 15, National Paddy Day — and it is worth reading alongside what paddy means in Nepali culture, because the crop carries a good deal more than calories.
Where the water comes from
A khet without water is a bari. The water arrives through a kulo, a hand-dug channel contouring around the hillside from a stream, sometimes for a very long way, following a gradient shallow enough to keep the water moving but not so steep that it cuts its own bed away.
The kulo is a social institution as much as a ditch. Households contribute labour to clear and repair it every year, water turns are allocated by long-standing custom, and disputes about who took water out of turn are among the most persistent quarrels in any village. When you see a hillside of green khet, you are looking at an agreement between families that has held for a very long time.
Higher up, it changes
Above roughly 2,000 metres the two-crop year runs out and much of the high hill country grows one crop a season: barley, buckwheat, potato and wheat. Jumla is the interesting exception, where irrigated marsi rice is grown high enough that it is routinely described as the highest paddy cultivation in the world. Jumla apples come out of the same cold, dry, high-sun conditions.
Down at the other end, the broad valley floors — the dun valleys like the one Surkhet sits in — are the only substantial flat farmland between the Tarai and the mountains, and they look completely different from the hills a few kilometres away. The terraced middle hills around Dailekh are the classic version of the staircase landscape.
What is changing
Terraces are being abandoned, and it is visible from any hill road. With men away on seasonal work in India or on contracts in the Gulf, households farm the near fields and let the far ones go, and an unworked terrace does not simply pause: the risers fail without the annual repair, scrub takes the surface within a few seasons, and bringing it back is a bigger job than keeping it. In some middle-hill districts the abandoned area is substantial.
The landscape a visitor finds beautiful is, in other words, a maintenance schedule. It looks like that because a very large number of people have kept doing a specific job every year, and where they stop, it stops looking like that.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between bari and khet?
Bari is unirrigated terrace that slopes slightly outward to shed rain, growing maize, millet, wheat and vegetables. Khet is level and bunded so it can hold irrigation water, and it grows rice in the monsoon followed by a winter crop. Khet is worth substantially more.
Why are the Nepali hills terraced?
Because there is almost no flat land and a large farming population. Terracing turns a slope into workable surfaces, slows runoff and holds soil that would otherwise wash into the river during the monsoon.
What is a kulo?
A hand-dug irrigation channel that carries water from a stream around the contour of a hillside to the rice terraces. Households maintain it collectively and water turns are allocated by custom, which makes it as much a village institution as a piece of engineering.
When is rice planted and harvested in Nepal?
Rice is transplanted into flooded terraces in Asar, roughly late June and July, as the monsoon arrives, and harvested in October and November. Wheat, barley or a legume usually follows on the same field over the winter.