By December the Kunzum road is shut and Spiti is reached only from Shimla, a two-day drive along the Sutlej and up past Nako.

Households keep one room warm with a bukhari and live in it. Water pipes are drained; ice is broken each morning at the spring.

A few homestays in Kaza now stay open all winter for visitors who come for the snow leopard and the stars. Their owners say the winter guests are the quietest they have.