The numbers just keep growing. Preliminary results of the National Census 2001 say the district of Kathmandu has a population of close to 1.1 million-which means the population has grown by 6.24 percent in the last decade. The Central Bureau of Statistics tells us that 53 percent (584,000) of the district's residents are men and the remaining 47 percent (512,000) are women. Over 700,000 people live inside Kathmandu Metropolitan City, and some 40,000 live in Kirtipur Municipality.

The number of families living in the district has increased by 92 percent in the last ten years. A decade ago, around 127,000 families lived in Kathmandu. Today, there are almost 245,000. Seventy percent of these families live inside the city area.

There's some good news, though. The survey indicates that nuclear family size has decreased from an average of 5.3 members in 1991 to 4.5 today.