Weather in Kathmandu in December

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, December is the one. Highs average 18 °C, lows 8.4 °C, and rain falls on 1 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

December ranks 4 of 12 in Kathmandu: past the worst of the year but short of November, which is the month to book if the dates are open.

Rain falls on only 1 days, so an itinerary with no wet-weather fallback is a reasonable risk. Nothing specialised needed — this is the month you pack for the trip rather than for the weather.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: it never really gets hot: not one day in an average December reaches 30 °C. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest December day reached 23.1 °C and the coldest night fell to 0.8 °C.

December is dependably dry, and that reliability is the point: across the twenty years measured, the wettest December on record still only managed 22 mm, and the driest managed 0 mm. There is no meaningful variability to plan around, which makes this one of the few months anywhere that you can build a fixed outdoor itinerary against without a fallback. The wettest single day in twenty years of Decembers brought 12 mm. Rain simply is not the variable that decides this trip — heat, crowds and cost are.

Wind is light at 4.1 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 52%.

How December sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 20.4 °C in November, 18 here, 17.4 in January. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in December

December sits at the dark end of Kathmandu's year — 10.4 hours of daylight against 13.9 at midsummer, holding steady all month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

An inland climate

Despite being inland, the year stays fairly even: 23.1 °C between the year's warmest afternoons and coldest nights. At 1317 m the air is thin enough to matter — sun that burns faster than the temperature suggests, and nights that cool off quickly.

How busy it gets

Peak season. Expect the highest prices of the year and to be booking well ahead.

Crowd levels are estimated from climate desirability and school-holiday calendars, not from visitor numbers.

December in Kathmandu versus nearby

If Kathmandu is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Bharatpur is close enough to be a coin toss — 6.3 °C warmer, the same number of rain days. Pokhara is close enough to be a coin toss — 3.9 °C warmer, the same number of rain days.

So: December works, with November the better month by 8 points if the dates can move. If they cannot, nothing here should stop you booking.

Every month in Kathmandu

See all twelve months in Kathmandu, or where else to go in December.