Lahan, in Siraha district of Nepal’s Madhesh Province, is one of the busiest commercial towns of the central Tarai — a trading hub strung along the East–West Highway. It is widely known for the Sagarmatha Choudhary Eye Hospital, which draws patients from across the Tarai and from the bordering districts of Bihar for some of the highest volumes of eye surgery in the world.
A Maithili-speaking market town, Lahan shows the everyday economic face of the Mithila plains: a place where the farms of two countries meet the highway, the clinic and the bazaar.