Weather in Kathmandu in October

Prime time. If you get to pick your dates, October is the one. Highs average 23.1 °C, lows 15.5 °C, and rain falls on 7 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

October ranks 6 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 on 7 days, 1 of them heavy. Enough to need a plan B, not enough to need a plan around it. 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 October reaches 30 °C. Across the twenty years measured, the hottest October day reached 29.1 °C and the coldest night fell to 9.7 °C, and the wettest single day dropped 60 mm — roughly 133% of the month's rain in one day.

This is the volatile part. October rainfall has ranged from 6 mm to 166 mm across the twenty years measured — a 160 mm spread around an average of 45 mm. The average is real but almost no individual October looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

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 74%.

How October sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 24.6 °C in September, 23.1 here, 20.4 in November. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much. Rain is the thing that moves: November brings 7 days less of it, so pushing the dates later buys drier weather.

Daylight in October

11.5 hours of daylight, losing 0.8 hours across the month. That is between Kathmandu's extremes of 13.9 and 10.4 hours, so days are long enough not to constrain the plan.

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

Busy. Popular without being frantic; book the things you care about, improvise the rest.

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

October in Kathmandu versus nearby

If Kathmandu is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Bharatpur is the weaker option in October — 6.8 °C warmer, 1 day more rain. Pokhara is close enough to be a coin toss — 3.5 °C warmer, the same number of rain days.

So: October works, with November the better month by 13 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 October.