Everest and a ploughman with buffaloes: the 2 rupees of type KM# 1188 brings together the world’s highest mountain and the daily work of the farmer. The obverse shows the peak labelled «Sagarmatha», the Nepali name for Everest; the reverse shows a farmer following a plough drawn by water buffaloes.

The reverse legends are bilingual — «Nepal» in Devanagari and NEPAL in Latin letters — beside the value «2 rupaiyan». There is no royal portrait or name on the coin, and that mattered: the type was struck from 2063 to 2066 of the Samvat era (2006–2009), and on 28 May 2008 the Constituent Assembly abolished the monarchy.

A single coin thus passed through a change of regime with its design untouched, spanning the last years of Gyanendra’s kingdom and the first years of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal. The pieces were made of brass-plated steel.

Grade AU-UNC: traces of circulation are minimal or absent, and the relief of Everest and the ploughman stays crisp. In a date run of 2 rupees, 2006 is the first year of the type.

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