Country officials said schools will stop functioning for the next three days after landslides and floods killed 129 people and 62 were missing.
Nepalese authorities said students and their parents faced difficulties as university and school buildings damaged by the rains needed repairs. Television footage shows police rescuers clearing mud and recovering 16 bodies from two buses swept away by a massive landslide on a key route in Kathmandu.
The floods paralysed traffic and normal activities in the Kathmandu Valley, where 37 deaths were reported in the region of 4 million people and the capital. Experts said up to 322.2 mm of rain fell in some parts of the capital, pushing water levels in the main Bagmati river 2.2 metres above the danger mark.
Meteorological officials in the capital blamed the heavy rains on a low-pressure area in the Bay of Bengal extending over parts of neighbouring India adjacent to Nepal. Climatologists from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) say haphazard development is increasing the risks of climate change in Nepal.
The impact of the rains compounded by poor drainage due to unplanned settlement and urbanisation efforts, construction in flood plains, lack of water retention areas and encroachment on the Bagmati River, according to Arun Bhakta Shrestha of the Centre for Environmental Risk Management.
There were some signs of respite Sunday morning with the rains stopping in many places, said Govinda Jha, a weather forecaster in the capital.
