Weather in Rishīkesh in December

Prime time. December is about as good as Rishīkesh gets. Highs average 22.6 °C, lows 11.1 °C, and rain falls on 2 days — nothing in the month is working against you.

December ranks 2 of 12 in Rishīkesh. Only November scores clearly higher, and the difference is small enough to be settled by price rather than weather.

Rain falls on only 2 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 29 °C and the coldest night fell to 4.7 °C.

This is the volatile part. December rainfall has ranged from 0 mm to 30 mm across the twenty years measured — a 30 mm spread around an average of 11 mm. The average is real but almost no individual December looks like it, so treat the figure as the middle of a wide range rather than a forecast.

Wind is light at 4.7 km/h, so the temperature on the page is close to the temperature on your skin, and humidity is unremarkable at 47%.

How December sits in the year

Temperatures hold steady either side: 26.2 °C in November, 22.6 here, 21.3 in January. Nothing about the timing within the month matters much.

Daylight in December

December sits at the dark end of Rishīkesh's year — 10.2 hours of daylight against 14.1 at midsummer, holding steady all month. Sightseeing days are genuinely shorter, and an itinerary built for summer will not fit.

An inland climate

With no coast nearby, the year swings a fair way — 30.9 °C between the warmest afternoons and the coldest nights, wider than any coastal city at this latitude would manage.

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 Rishīkesh versus nearby

If Rishīkesh is one option among several, the nearby comparison is worth making. Shimla is the weaker option in December — 10.1 °C cooler, the same number of rain days. Chandigarh is close enough to be a coin toss — within a degree on temperature, the same number of rain days.

So: December is effectively as good as it gets here — 1 points behind November, which is inside the margin where the weather stops being the deciding factor and price starts being it.

Every month in Rishīkesh

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