The year begins mid-April and the current year is approximately 56 years, 8 months and 15 days ahead of the (western) Gregorian Calendar. There are 12 months (Baisakh, Jestha, Asadh, Shrawan, Bhadra, Aswin, Kartik, Mangsir, Poush, Magh, Falgun and Chaitra) per year. Unlike Gregorian months, the lengths of Nepali months are not predetermined, and change from year to year, varying from 29 days to 32 days.
Most Nepalese calendars do include the Gregorian calendar date to make conversion easy. However, there are a number of websites to convert Nepali dates into Gregorian especially to help converting your birthday for filling in foreign application forms.
In 2008 (Gregorian), Nepal decided to adjust its calendar in year 2066 resulting the year to have only 11 months and festivals starting one month earlier in sub-sequent years. A Republica article explains: "The cabinet decision was based on the report of the Festivals Reforms National Taskforce (FRNT) formed by then Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation in December 2006, said the source. The 19-member taskforce comprising astrologers and religious figures, had recommended to the government to reform the calendar, saying that the earth´s rotation in its axis at an inclination of 23.5 degrees has resulted into a gain of one day every 72 years. There has been no adjustment for this in the calendar for the past 1,656 years. This means that the calendar is behind by 23 days." - At the end the implementation has been postponed after disagreements with the Nepal Panchang Nirnayak Samitee (NPNS), the committee preparing the calendar and deciding on festivals as per lunar, star and solar calendar. (Source: The Himalayan Times)
Finally, Nepal has a unique Time Zone. Nepal Standard Time (NPT) is 5 hours and 45 minutes ahead of GMT. There are no other countries in the world which has a time zone difference increment of 15 minutes. There is no daylight saving time adjustment.
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