Air quality in Kathmandu

I am considering a trip to Nepal. This would probably start by flying to Kathmandu but possibly first to India and by land to Kathmandu.

I have not visited Nepal before but I have spent a lot of time in the region: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. So, until recently, I would have been quite confident that I would cope. Unfortunately, what has changed is the air or my lungs. In my most recent trip to India, I was affected by the air quality so badly that I was taken to hospital. This was a business trip and I spent much of my time in an air-conditioned hotel or office. I am now more concerned about travel to the region. It is particulates which concern me most and not pollen. I hope and expect that if I go trekking out of town then the air will be very clean but I don't know what to expect in Kathmandu.

The problem with air quality is that it varies a lot over time (with weather and other environmental conditions) and even with small location changes within the same city.

There are websites that do track air quality for a large number of locations in (more or less) real time (examples https://waqi.info/, https://aqicn.org/ https://www.iqair.com/). Your best shot is probably to correlate these readings with how you feel and what symptoms you do display. Maybe you can look up the indices for the locations and dates when you were sick.

Then monitor the maps live and avoid specific locations that have high pollution. At the moment one website list the quality in Kathmandu to be between 33 (good) and 91 (unhealthy for sensitive groups).