Qibla direction in Pokhara

How to face the Qibla in Pokhara

Stand where you will pray and find north first. Then turn towards west and move a further 0.5° towards north: the result is the bearing of 270.5°. The direction is close to due west, which makes it easy to remember.

Scholars agree that someone who can see the Kaaba must face it exactly, while someone far away faces its direction (jihat al-Ka‘bah) as precisely as reasonably possible. If a mosque is nearby, its mihrab and prayer lines are the easiest reference, since they were set when the building was laid out. At home, mark the direction once with tape or a small arrow so the whole family prays the same way.

Why a flat map shows a different direction

A straight line drawn on a flat (Mercator) map from Pokhara to Mecca points to 260.3° (west), 10.2° away from the correct 270.5°. That map line is a rhumb line: it keeps the same compass heading all the way, but it is 21 km longer than the true shortest route. The Qibla follows the great circle, the shortest path on the curved Earth, which is why the bearing differs.

The angle on this page is the initial bearing of the great circle from 28.2669° N, 83.9685° E to the Kaaba (21.4225° N, 39.8262° E). It is the method used by mosque architects and by every serious Qibla calculator, and it gives one exact answer for each point on Earth.

Distance from Pokhara to Mecca and Medina

Mecca is 4,494 km from Pokhara as the crow flies, and Medina, the city of the Prophet ﷺ, is 4,415 km away. A direct flight would take roughly 5 h 47 min, although most pilgrims from Pokhara connect through Jeddah or Medina airport.

Clocks in Pokhara run 2.8 hours ahead of Mecca all year. Prayer times, however, depend on the sun at your own location, so always use the prayer times of Pokhara rather than those of Mecca.

Finding the Qibla with the sun in Pokhara

On 173 days of 2027, the sun passes exactly through the Qibla direction of Pokhara while it is well above the horizon. At that moment, facing the sun means facing Mecca. The effect is most frequent in May (31 days); for example, on 1 April 2027 it happens at 17:43 local time.

On 179 days the sun stands exactly opposite the Qibla: then the shadow of any vertical object, a pole, a door frame or a plumb line, points straight towards Mecca. This is most frequent in May (31 days), for instance on 1 April 2027 at 06:50.

Twice a year the sun passes directly over the Kaaba, on 28 May 2027 and 16 July 2027. Both moments are in daylight in Pokhara: at 15:03 and 15:12 local time, face the sun and you face the Qibla exactly, anywhere in the city.

Pokhara compared with other cities

Compared with Kathmandu, 147 km away, the Qibla in Pokhara is turned 1.3° further anticlockwise (270.5° against 271.7°), and Mecca is 134 km closer. The nearest city with its own Qibla page, Bharatpur, Bagmati Province, Nepal (80 km), prays towards 271.4°, a difference of 0.9°.

Across the 13 cities in Nepal on this site, the Qibla ranges from 268.3° in Dhangadhi to 273.9° in Biratnagar, a spread of 5.6°. That is too large to use one national direction, so each city has its own bearing.

See all cities on the Qibla page for Nepal.

Qibla in cities near Pokhara

• Bharatpur, Bagmati Province, Nepal271.4° · 80 km
• Butwal270.9° · 82 km
• Hetauda271.9° · 140 km
• Kathmandu271.7° · 147 km
• Birgunj272.3° · 165 km
• Nepalgunj269.6° · 232 km