Nepali, general

About thirty thousand Nepalis work in Bahrain, nearly all as single men and women on fixed-term contracts as security guards, hotel and restaurant staff, cleaners, factory hands, drivers and domestic workers. Nepal's reputation for Gurkha soldiers has made Nepalis a favoured choice for guard work: Nepali guard forces protect military and naval sites, and Nepalis serve in Bahrain's Royal Court and National Guard. Most are Hindus or Buddhists from the hill and Terai districts, and in Bahrain, unlike in Saudi Arabia, they can celebrate Dashain, Tihar and Teej openly in rented halls in Manama and Riffa. Nepal opened an embassy in Manama's Juffair district in 2013 to serve the community.

About thirty thousand Nepalis live in Iraq, most of them in the Kurdistan Region, even though Nepal has banned its citizens from working there since twelve Nepali workers were killed by insurgents in 2004. Unusually for Nepali migration, around four in five are women, who work as live-in domestic workers in Erbil, Sulaymaniyah and Baghdad, while men serve as guards, cooks and café and hotel staff. Many have stayed more than a decade without going home, afraid they could not return. Most are Hindus, with Buddhists among the Tamang, Ghale and Gurung workers, and those who die and cannot be repatriated are buried rather than cremated, in plots the Kurdistan Regional Government set aside for them near Erbil and in Sulaymaniyah.

Nepalis in Israel, about 5,000 people, are mostly caregivers looking after elderly Israelis, many of them women selected by lottery under a government-to-government agreement, along with a few hundred young agricultural students on 'learn and earn' programmes on kibbutz farms. On 7 October 2023 ten Nepali students were killed at Kibbutz Alumim near Gaza and a classmate, Bipin Joshi, was taken hostage; his body was returned two years later. The killings briefly halted migration, but Nepalis have kept coming, drawn by caregiver wages several times what they could earn at home or in the Gulf.

Nepalis in Jordan are young migrant workers, many of them women, who sew clothing for American brands in the export factories of Jordan's industrial zones or work as domestic helpers in Amman homes. They began arriving in the 2000s, and a 2017 labour agreement between the two countries opened domestic work to Nepali women with a minimum wage of 300 US dollars a month. Nepal stopped sending garment workers in 2018 in protest at low wages, so numbers fell from about 8,000, but recruitment has since resumed. Most are Hindus who keep Dashain and Tihar in factory dormitories, with Buddhist workers from the hill peoples and a small Christian minority.

Nepalis are one of Kuwait's fastest-growing migrant communities, 186,600 strong in mid-2026 against about 67,000 at the end of 2020. About two-thirds work for companies as cleaners, guards, drivers, restaurant and retail staff, and most of the rest are domestic workers, many of them women who travelled despite Nepal's restrictions on sending housemaids to the Gulf. Nearly all are Hindus or Buddhists from Nepal's hills and Terai, living in shared rooms in Farwaniya and Jleeb al-Shuyoukh or in their employers' homes. The community has paid a heavy price in recent years: eleven Nepalis died in the August 2025 bootleg methanol poisoning traced to Jleeb al-Shuyoukh, and a Nepali driver was killed by an Iranian missile in northern Kuwait in July 2026.

Nepalis in Lebanon are a small, ageing community of about 1,200, almost all women who have worked as live-in maids in Lebanese homes for ten years or more. They are what remains of some 12,000 Nepali women who came before Nepal banned sending domestic workers to Lebanon in 2010, so almost no newcomers arrive and many have stayed on without returning home. Most belong to the hill peoples of eastern and central Nepal, Rai, Limbu, Tamang, Magar and Gurung, alongside Hindu Chhetri and Brahmin women, and speak Nepali among themselves; their faith mixes Hindu, Buddhist and Kirat practice. Nepal has no embassy in Lebanon, and during the 2024 war women in Beirut's bombed southern suburbs told reporters they had no way home and stayed to keep paying for their children's schooling.

About 25,000 Nepalis live in Oman, men working as security guards, hotel and restaurant staff, cleaners, drivers and construction hands, and a fast-growing number of women working in Omani homes. Nepal has banned women from taking housemaid jobs in the Gulf since 2017, yet more than 12,000 Nepali women now work in Oman as domestic workers, many brought in on visit visas after the UAE tightened its own rules. Hindus with Buddhist and Kirati minorities, they mark Dashain, Tihar and Teej in shared rooms and community halls, and the Nepali Non-Resident Social Club runs Nepal's stalls at Muscat's winter Night Festival. The Nepali embassy now travels to Salalah, 1,100 km from the capital, to register workers who left Nepal without a labour permit.

Nepalis are Qatar's third-largest foreign community, about 367,000 workers, nearly all men who came on short contracts to build the World Cup stadiums and now guard, clean and staff Doha's hotels, malls and offices. They come from every corner of Nepal: high-caste Hindu hill families, Gurung and Tamang Buddhists, Rai and Limbu from the eastern hills and Maithili-speaking Madhesis from the southern plains, who share camp rooms in the Industrial Area and celebrate Dashain and Tihar with goat curry and sel roti in rented halls. Heat and exhaustion take a heavy toll, with close to two hundred Nepalis dying in Qatar each year. A Nepali-language church founded in the late 1990s has grown to about seven hundred members meeting in twenty-two house groups.

Nepalis in Saudi Arabia are almost all men on two-year labour contracts, one of the kingdom's largest migrant workforces; the 2022 census counted fewer than 5,000 Nepali women, since Nepal restricts women from going to the Gulf as housemaids. They build the Riyadh Metro, the giga-projects of Vision 2030 and NEOM, guard buildings, stack Amazon warehouses and staff hotels, supermarkets and cleaning companies, living in company labour camps with men from the same districts. They come both from the hills, Hindu Bahun, Chhetri and Dalit families and Buddhist Magar, Tamang and Gurung, and from the southern plains of Madhesh, whose Maithili-, Bhojpuri- and Awadhi-speaking Madhesis and Tharu, Muslims among them, make up a large part of the Nepalis in the kingdom. Hindus and Buddhists keep Dashain and Tihar quietly in their rooms, while Nepali Muslims can pray in Saudi mosques.

Nepalis are one of the largest foreign communities in the United Arab Emirates, about half a million people, and the Emirates now take more Nepali workers than any other country. Almost all are men on two- to three-year contracts who guard malls and towers, clean offices, staff hotels and build in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, sending home the wages that keep families in Nepal's hills and southern plains afloat. They come from every community in Nepal, high-caste Hindu hill families, Magar, Gurung and Tamang, Rai and Limbu, and Maithili-speaking Madhesis, and keep Dashain, Tihar, Teej and Chhath in rented halls and city parks; a Nepal Day in Dubai's Creek Park in 2025 drew over forty thousand visitors. A small Nepali-speaking church movement meets in flats and on apartment lawns in Dubai.