From Khasa province to the kingdom of Jumla
Jumla was part of the Khasa Malla empire, whose capital lay a day's walk away in the Sinja valley. When the empire broke up in the 14th century into the twenty-two small hill kingdoms called the Baise Rajya, Jumla emerged as the strongest of them. Around 1404 a ruler named Baliraja, who had married into the old royal line, founded the kingdom of Jumla, and his Kalyal descendants ruled the upper Karnali for nearly four centuries.
At its height Jumla's power reached from Mustang in the east to the hills of present-day Uttarakhand in the west, and in the 18th century it held Mustang itself. Jumla resisted the first Gorkhali attacks, and local tradition says Prithvi Narayan Shah was wounded in battle against it. In 1789, under the regency of Bahadur Shah, Gorkhali troops finally annexed the kingdom.
Under the new state Jumla became a remote district headquarters, reached only on foot or later by small plane. In 2007 the Karnali Highway finally connected it to Surkhet and the south, though the road is still rough and often closed in the monsoon. Today Khalanga is a busy market town of government offices, schools, hotels and apple traders, and a base for travellers heading into the hills.
