The Kathmandu Valley
The Kathmandu Valley is a rough ellipse measuring about 151/2 miles along its east-west axis and 12 miles at its greatest width, with a base area of some 218 square miles. The Valley is about 4,400 feet above sea level and ringed by hills that rise from 1,000 to 4,000 feet above the level of the Valley. Visible on the horizon to the north of the Valley in clear weather are the ranges of the high Himalayas. The Valley is the bed of an ancient lake. Its alluvial soil contains deposits of peat and of clays with high phosphate content which were traditionally dug and used as fertilizer. Now it is drained by a network of rivers that, almost dry during the dry months, swell during the rains and join in the main course of the Bagmati river, which drains the Valley at its southwestern boundary. Recorded mean monthly temperatures are reported as varying between maximums of 24°C (73.2°F) in June and a minimum of 7°C (44.6°F) in January. The climate is usually temperate, and it is rare
that temperatures dip a degree or two below freezing. The summers are first warm and dry, then more and more humid until the onset of the monsoon rains.
In the years 1967-1969 the Kathmandu Valley had between forty-four and sixty inches of annual rain (Central Bureau of Statistics 1974). Nearly half of the annual rainfall occurs during the monsoons of July and August, while the lowest rainfall, usually less than an inch in all, falls during November, December, and January, when the ground and air become progressively drier and dustier.
Valley farmlands, such as those around Bhaktapur, are in the flat-lands at the base of the hills and on terraces on the hill flanks. The fields are irrigated after the rainy season through a system of connecting ditches that are periodically unblocked to allow water to flow from collection basins in the hills. Various crops—rice, wheat, and a variety of vegetables (see chap. 4)—are successively raised in these fields during the course of the year.
The Kathmandu Valley, particularly the city of Kathmandu, is now the center for national government and administration. Light industry, tourism, and a multitude of commercial activities are centered there. It is estimated that about 5 percent of Nepal's people live in the Kathmandu Valley, some 600,000 people according to the 1971 census. They live[3] in the three major Valley cities of Kathmandu (150,402), Patan (59,049), and Bhaktapur (40,112),[4] a large number of secondary towns and villages, and in scattered hamlets and farms. Most of the country's ethnic groups are represented in the Valley. Census data in 1961 suggested that about half the Valley population were Newars.[5] ,[6]