Alan B: 06.11.21 The Gurkhas are famous for their fighting knife, known as the kukri, khukuri or khukri. Short, broad-bladed and with a distinctive curve, the kukri (or khukuri) Gurkha knife is widely used in the hills of Nepal for chopping wood, killing animals, opening cans, clearing undergrowth and indeed any other task that requires a strong blade, including killing vampires as fans of Bram Stoker's Count Dracula will know! Young Nepalese men learn to use the Gurkha knife from a very early age and it is this deep familiarity with the kukri (or khukuri) that makes it so effective in the hands of a Gurkha soldier. By the time a young man joins the Gurkhas in his late teens or early twenties, the kukri (or khukuri) has effectively become an extension of his dominant arm. This article looks at the background to the famous Gurkha knife and examines why, even after hundreds of years, the kukri (or khukuri) remains a key part of a Gurkha soldier's personal armoury - indeed, the prospect of a Gurkha soldier deploying on operations without his kukri (or khukuri) remains as unthinkable today as it was over 200 years ago when Gurkhas were first recruited into the service of the British Crown by the British East India Company.