October to March is the season. The skies are clear, the daytime temperature sits comfortably in the high 20s, and the nights drop to a pleasant 8–12°C. December and January can be foggy in the early morning — flight delays are common in mid-winter — but the days are bright. This is the time for the Walled City, the Shalimar Gardens, and Wagah.
April and May are pleasant for a fortnight, then warm. June through August is brutal: temperatures of 40–48°C are normal, dust storms blow in from the west, and the air quality is dire. A short monsoon in July and August brings some relief.
Basant, the spring kite festival, is the great Lahori event of the year — held in January or February depending on the moon. It has been intermittently banned over safety concerns (glass-coated kite strings have caused fatalities), but unofficially the rooftops still fill with kites. The Urs of Data Ganj Bakhsh in October and the Mela Chiraghan (Festival of Lamps) at Shalimar in March are the other big draws.