History of Jiri

Since the beginning of the era, Jiri was a wide grazing land locally called KHARKA; the entire region was covered by a dense forest. It leads to the nearest gateway to Tibetan boarder which is the main escape for classical trading between Nepal and Tibet. The entire land is an ancient residence of Sherpa.

At the ancient time the Nepal Rajya was under the empire of Kirat, there were seven princes of King Kirat, during the course of war fair among these brothers in order to acquire Rajyas among these brothers 2nd one came to Jiri. And hence his surname was named as JIREL. Similarly, the other one went to Siri and called Sirel.

JIRI is also an adventurous land for the Shah Kings of Nepal. Basically all the Shah dynasty of Nepal used to visit Jiri for hiking.

Nevertheless, the history of Jiri isn’t shrinking only to these events. However, in the year 2014 a Swiss citizen came to Nepal in order to hike towards the Everest base camp via Jiri. During his trail, he finds Jiri valley similar to the Zurich city of Switzerland. So Jiri is now called Switzerland of Nepal.

The Swiss thought of doing something good in Jiri and purposed the Swiss government for a project. As a result he established a cow farm named as Jiri Pashu Bikash Farm and Bangur Farm there by in Jiri.

 Since the Swiss they belong to a civilized nation so they are more into health conscious and sanitation, as a result they used to bring medicine from Switzerland for their personal care but during the course of time they saw the superstations beliefs in Jiri residence towards their medical care and treatment so they used to provide medicine to the villagers when they are ill. These incidents become a part of daily life to the residents of Jiri and as a result when they get ill health they used to visit the Swiss in the farm in order to seek medicine. Thus the Swiss realized the need of a community hospital thereby and hence established a hospital and hired the doctor from Switzerland. Jiri was considered as a prominent point for the treatments of TB in those times, even the people from India used to come to Jiri to treat TB. Prior to this the Swiss have already constructed a road from Kathmandu to Jiri in order to transport goods and their travel, they also made a small helipad within the periphery of farm in order to fly in and off to Kathmandu in a hurry time. This is how the Swiss have saw the seed of infrastructure of development in the succession years after 2014, not only these but also they have opened a school to educate the local villagers children in the Jiri locality during their stay in the Jiri along with a technical school named as Jiri technical school in which many students from various parts of the country used to come to study. The beauty of the technical school was that the teachers were all Swiss initially and encouraged local educated people to work there by.

The entry of the Swiss was like a light at the end of the tunnel or we can say that it is like a silver lining in the black cloud during the time Jiri was the hot spot for tourism there used to be a big crowd of tourist from various parts of the world and they teak up to Everest base camp. Even though, the national VIP of Nepal used to go for hiking.

This pace of advancement is no longer in existence in Jiri because after the expiry of the Swiss project in 2034/35, all the authority came under the government of Nepal. And various projects which were previously under one umbrella i.e. Jiri multipurpose development project came under various ministry and the crash down begins overnight due to poor bureaucracy, corruption, nepotism and favoritism and due to the myopic vision of political leaders.

However, silver rings can be seen in clouds; the co-operation among the political leaders while taking any critical decisions about the village, no Nepal bandh and any strike takes place in Jiri, very less load shedding and upgrade of the Jiri higher secondary school to a bachelor degree program, Swiss cheese factory under the authority of DDC and Swiss cow and Bangur farm working for as a technical center and research center and breeding center, promotion of internal tourism, students and peoples from various co-operative to visit Jiri co operative which is being honored in the recent year as a best co operative in the nation are some of the approaches that caught the path towards the revive of the prosperous Jiri. Jiri community hospital has a local monitoring agency under the chairmanship of TANKA JIREL, local farmers are opting towards the organic cultivation now days and growth of few of the boarding schools is also helping Jiri to march towards the stairs of civilization. A lot of prospects with a little peculiar climate have become the synonymous to Jiri.