How to calculate land area in Nepal
Ropani in the hills, Bigha in the Terai, square feet on the listing. Here is how the units fit together and three practical ways to get the area of a plot.
Nepal uses two traditional land systems side by side, and a listing will often quote a third unit entirely. Knowing how they relate is the difference between spotting a good price and badly overpaying.
The two systems
The hills — including the Kathmandu Valley — use Ropani, Aana, Paisa and Dam. The Terai uses Bigha, Katha and Dhur. They are not related by any round number, because they came from different measuring traditions.
| Unit | Equals | Square feet |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Ropani | 16 Aana | 5,476 |
| 1 Aana | 4 Paisa | 342.25 |
| 1 Paisa | 4 Dam | 85.56 |
| 1 Dam | — | 21.39 |
| Unit | Equals | Square feet |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Bigha | 20 Katha | 72,900 |
| 1 Katha | 20 Dhur | 3,645 |
| 1 Dhur | — | 182.25 |
One Bigha is about 13.31 Ropani. One Ropani is about 1.50 Katha. Neither is a whole number, so always convert rather than estimating in your head. The lookup tables for 1–10 Dhur, Katha to Ropani, Aana to square metres and Bigha to hectare are in Dhur, Katha, Ropani and Bigha in square feet.
Method 1 — from your naksa
If you have a naksa, kitta map or site plan, the drawing already contains the shape. The official digital copy of that sheet is a Mero Kitta map print — a PDF you can load straight into the tool. What the file does not contain is a scale your phone can use, so you supply one: pick a line on the drawing whose real length you know, and tell the tool how long it is. The full walkthrough is in Mero Kitta naksha and map.
Photograph or scan the naksa as flat and square-on as you can.
Tap the two ends of a line you know — a dimensioned boundary, a road width, or the printed scale bar.
Enter that length. If you measured it with a ruler on the paper rather than on the ground, say so and give the drawing scale, and the conversion is done for you.
Tap each corner of the plot in order around the boundary.
Read the area in every unit at once.
A tilted photo stretches one side of the sheet. No single scale factor can undo that, so lay the drawing flat and shoot straight down for anything you care about.
Method 2 — from tape measurements
No drawing? Measure the plot yourself. For any shape with more than three sides you need more than the side lengths: a four-sided figure with fixed sides can still flex like a hinge, so the area is not determined. The fix is to also measure the diagonals.
Sketch the plot roughly — it does not need to be to scale.
Pick one corner as the base.
Measure every side, and also the diagonal from the base corner to each non-adjacent corner.
Enter the lengths. Each triangle is solved with Heron’s formula and the areas are added up.
This is exactly what the By lengths mode does, and the auto-triangulate button builds the diagonals for you so you only have to fill in numbers.
Method 3 — from the lalpurja
Your land certificate already states an area, usually in the traditional unit for the district. That figure is the legal one. Use a converter to see it in square feet or square metres, and treat any measurement you make yourself as a cross-check rather than a replacement.
Which number should you trust?
For buying, selling or registering: the Survey Department record and a licensed surveyor. For everything before that — comparing listings, planning a house, estimating construction cost, checking whether a quoted area is plausible — measuring from the naksa is fast, free and close enough to be useful.
