Weather in Kathmandu in May

Shoulder season. May sits in between. You will get good days and you will lose some. You should expect rain on 15 days of the month, which is more days wet than dry.

May ranks 11 of 12 — near the bottom of Kathmandu's year. November is the month that works, and the swing between the two is 44 points, which is a different holiday rather than a slightly better one.

Rain on 15 days, 3 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. Pack for 29.8 °C days and 18.5 °C nights; the spread matters more here than any single number.

What the averages hide

Averages flatten a month, and this one hides a few things: 16 days top 30 °C — hot spells arrive, but they break. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest May day reached 35.6 °C and the coldest night fell to 13.5 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 44 mm — roughly 49% of the month's rain in one day.

May is moderately variable: 11 mm in the driest year against 147 mm in the wettest, around an average of 89 mm. Roughly two Mays in three land near that average, and the third does something else entirely.

Wind is light at 6.4 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 49%.

How May sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 28.8 °C in April, 29.8 here, 29.1 in June. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much. Rain is the thing that moves: June brings 7 days more of it, so the earlier half of a flexible trip is the safer half.

Daylight in May

May is at or near the longest days of Kathmandu's year: 13.5 hours of daylight, gaining 0.6 hours across the month. Evenings are the real gain — dinner outdoors still happens in full light.

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

Off season. The genuine off season: cheapest by a distance, with the caveat that some tours and restaurants close entirely.

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

May in Kathmandu versus nearby

If Kathmandu is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Bharatpur is the weaker option in May — 9.1 °C warmer, the same number of rain days. Pokhara is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: May is a compromise. November is 41 points better and is what Kathmandu is actually like at its best — worth moving the trip for if that is possible, and worth adjusting expectations for if it is not.

Every month in Kathmandu

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