Before Nepal, I had never seen people carry an umbrella over their heads without the rain prompting them to. Until now, I had always assumed that these were figments of the impressionists’ or Henry James’s imagination.
But here in Nepal these (mostly) girls and women are real, and one quick look at the weather will tell you that the umbrella-carrying women were created here.
It has never taken me long to figure out the pattern of any region’s climate. Morocco, for example, came in two temperatures: hot and pal jehenem, meaning hell. Dry or not, 130 degrees Fahrenheit will stunt the ambitions of any workaholic, no matter how acute the caffeine buzz.
In Germany, where I grew up, you will very rarely have a cloudless day. In fact, I don’t even expect it there anymore, regardless of how sincerely the weather girl will lie to you through her pearly whites.
SoCal (Southern California) is like Groundhog Day. Seventy degrees, sunny. Never fails. Even global warming hasn’t changed that. The polar bears will be walking on San Diego’s beaches before the climate changes there. The East Coast would grow teeth and saw through your skin until you felt it nibbling at your bone in winter...only to miraculously morph into a spatula and crack your shell to fry you in summer. The South, on the other hand, has the perfect weather, if you’re lucky enough to be part of the majority population there, the insects. Amman, Jordan has arguably had the best weather: consistently around 80-90 degrees for most of the year, but with a nice breeze, as the city is almost one k above sea level.
With time, it has never been hard to establish just what the weather would be like on any given day. The jury (in this case, me) is still out on Kathmandu. I can only confirm that taking an umbrella with you in these parts is a very good idea.
There’s the rainy season that supposedly has just ended. Typically, it would run from March to September.
And yet, there was plenty of rain in October. Predicting it is quite another thing, but the umbrella users are quite correct about this, too, without having to kill the two birds with their one umbrella. If it isn’t a muggy 80-90 degrees, you will be in for a warm rain. This past week, we’ve had rain clouds and the sun try to eclipse each other, that’s how inconsistent either one was. An English expat compared it to his own weather, with the difference that England has less sun in a year than Nepal in a day.
Both are quite nice. I prefer a good drop of rain myself, although nice weather has given me some good quality days with the family. With the sun out and the sky clear you have a magnificent view of the mountains around Kathmandu. When it rains you still see the mountains, only now they are shrouded by a thick veil of clouds attempting to scale them, or, failing this, to bypass them altogether.
From what I can tell so far, the weather is quite extraordinary so far, albeit admittedly lacking the pattern that a control freak like myself covets. I will still pass on the umbrella for now.
But here in Nepal these (mostly) girls and women are real, and one quick look at the weather will tell you that the umbrella-carrying women were created here.
It has never taken me long to figure out the pattern of any region’s climate. Morocco, for example, came in two temperatures: hot and pal jehenem, meaning hell. Dry or not, 130 degrees Fahrenheit will stunt the ambitions of any workaholic, no matter how acute the caffeine buzz.
In Germany, where I grew up, you will very rarely have a cloudless day. In fact, I don’t even expect it there anymore, regardless of how sincerely the weather girl will lie to you through her pearly whites.
SoCal (Southern California) is like Groundhog Day. Seventy degrees, sunny. Never fails. Even global warming hasn’t changed that. The polar bears will be walking on San Diego’s beaches before the climate changes there. The East Coast would grow teeth and saw through your skin until you felt it nibbling at your bone in winter...only to miraculously morph into a spatula and crack your shell to fry you in summer. The South, on the other hand, has the perfect weather, if you’re lucky enough to be part of the majority population there, the insects. Amman, Jordan has arguably had the best weather: consistently around 80-90 degrees for most of the year, but with a nice breeze, as the city is almost one k above sea level.
With time, it has never been hard to establish just what the weather would be like on any given day. The jury (in this case, me) is still out on Kathmandu. I can only confirm that taking an umbrella with you in these parts is a very good idea.
There’s the rainy season that supposedly has just ended. Typically, it would run from March to September.
And yet, there was plenty of rain in October. Predicting it is quite another thing, but the umbrella users are quite correct about this, too, without having to kill the two birds with their one umbrella. If it isn’t a muggy 80-90 degrees, you will be in for a warm rain. This past week, we’ve had rain clouds and the sun try to eclipse each other, that’s how inconsistent either one was. An English expat compared it to his own weather, with the difference that England has less sun in a year than Nepal in a day.
Both are quite nice. I prefer a good drop of rain myself, although nice weather has given me some good quality days with the family. With the sun out and the sky clear you have a magnificent view of the mountains around Kathmandu. When it rains you still see the mountains, only now they are shrouded by a thick veil of clouds attempting to scale them, or, failing this, to bypass them altogether.
From what I can tell so far, the weather is quite extraordinary so far, albeit admittedly lacking the pattern that a control freak like myself covets. I will still pass on the umbrella for now.
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