Emergencies in Nepal for Foreigners: Numbers and Procedures

Save these now: Police 100, Fire 101, Ambulance 102, Traffic Police 103. Then add three more that matter specifically to you - your embassy's emergency line, your insurer's 24-hour assistance number, and the emergency department of the nearest capable hospital. In the valley a private ambulance or a taxi is frequently faster than the public service.

For earthquake and monsoon preparation and the general picture, emergency covers it. This page covers what differs when you are not a citizen.

Keep this where you can reach it


Police / Fire / Ambulance / Traffic	100 / 101 / 102 / 103
Your embassy	Emergency line, not the switchboard
Insurer assistance	24-hour number and policy number
Nearest hospital with overnight emergency	Name, address, phone
Blood group	Yours and your household's
Passport details	Number, issue and expiry, kept separately
Someone outside Nepal	One contact everyone checks in with

Keep a printed copy with your documents and a photograph on your phone. In a serious incident networks congest and the people who cope are the ones who prepared while nothing was happening.

Lost or stolen passport

The sequence matters and doing it out of order costs days:

Report to the police and obtain a written report. Everything downstream requires it.
Contact your embassy with the report. They issue a replacement passport or an emergency travel document.
Go to the Department of Immigration with the new document and the police report to have your visa transferred or reissued. This step is the one people forget - a new passport does not carry your Nepali visa, and leaving the country without regularising it is a problem at the airport.

Keep a photograph and a photocopy of your passport's data page and your visa somewhere separate from the passport itself. It turns a week into a day.

Medical emergencies

Go straight to a hospital with an emergency department rather than waiting for an ambulance, if you can move safely. Private hospitals in the valley generally admit faster.

Two specifics for a foreign patient. Payment is expected at the time and your insurer will almost certainly reimburse rather than pay directly, so a card or cash matters at admission. And Nepal operates largely on a blood replacement system - the family is asked to arrange donors. With no local network, say so immediately so the hospital works with the blood bank instead. Healthcare covers the system; insurance covers what a claim needs.

Call your insurer's assistance line early, even if you are unsure about claiming. Most policies require notification within a set window.

Evacuation

For conditions beyond local capability, patients are commonly moved to India or Thailand. Medical evacuation cover is the insurance line you cannot self-fund and the one to confirm before you need it.

In the mountains, helicopter rescue is effective and expensive. Where the situation allows, have the evacuation authorised through your insurer rather than agreed on the mountain - travel explains why that matters here specifically.

If you are arrested or detained

Ask to contact your embassy. Consular staff cannot get you released, cannot pay fines or legal fees, and cannot intervene in Nepali legal process - but they can confirm your welfare, provide a list of lawyers, and notify family.

Engage a Nepali lawyer promptly. Do not sign anything in Nepali that has not been translated for you by someone independent, however routine it is presented as being. Legal and government covers finding representation, and legal information covers the court structure.

If someone dies

Rare, and unmanageable from scratch in the moment. The sequence is a medical certification of death, registration, and then either local cremation or burial, or repatriation.

Repatriating remains is expensive, slow and heavily documented - it requires the death registration, embalming by an approved facility, a no-objection certificate, airline approval and consular paperwork, and takes days. Your embassy will guide the process but does not pay for it. Some insurance policies include repatriation of remains; check whether yours does, because it is one of the few costs that can exceed medical evacuation.

If the person held a Nepali visa or had property or a business here, there is an estate to close as well. Legal and government covers finding a lawyer.

The language barrier in a crisis

Emergency responders may not speak English. Two things help: having your address written in Nepali on your phone and by your door, and having a Nepali-speaking contact you can call to translate - a colleague, a landlord, a neighbour.

This is one of the practical arguments for learning some Nepali and for knowing your neighbours rather than only other foreign residents.

Earthquake, as a non-citizen

The preparation is the same as for anyone - water, torch, cash in small notes, a meeting point, a go-bag. Three additions for you: keep document copies separate from originals, register with your embassy so you appear on the list when they account for nationals, and agree an out-of-country contact everyone will reach rather than trying to reach each other.

Where this goes wrong

Not saving the numbers. You will not look them up in the moment.
Replacing a passport and forgetting the visa transfer. It surfaces at the airport.
No cash at home. Power and network failures take card payment with them.
Expecting the embassy to fix a legal problem. They cannot.
No evacuation cover. Rare, and financially catastrophic without it.

Where to go next

Insurance is the page to read before any of this happens. Emergency covers earthquake and monsoon preparation in full.