Siddharthanagar

Siddharthanagar, formerly and still colloquially called Bhairahawa, is a municipality and the administrative headquarters of Rupandehi District in Lumbini Province of Nepal, 265 kilometres west of Kathmandu. It is the closest city to Lumbini, the birthplace of Gautama Buddha, which lies about 25 kilometres to the west, and it borders the Indian city of Sonauli in Maharajganj district of Uttar Pradesh. The city was founded as Bhairahawa in 1967, and the poet Komal Dutta Tiwari changed the name in 1977 to Siddharthanagar, after Siddhartha, the given name of the Buddha. Its population was 52,569 in 2001, 64,566 in 2011 and 74,436 in 2021. Bhojpuri is the most widely spoken first language, ahead of Nepali and Awadhi. Higher education institutions in the city include the Rupandehi Campus, the IAAS Paklihawa Campus and the Universal College of Medical Sciences.