Losar: Tibetan Buddhist New Year in Spiti

Route: International airport → Delhi hotel

Your flight lands in Delhi and a private transfer takes you straight to the hotel. There is nothing scheduled for this evening beyond check-in and rest — the drive north starts properly tomorrow, and the days ahead are long enough that this first evening is better spent recovering from the flight than sightseeing.

A trip briefing covers what the next eleven days actually involve: the Inner Line Permit process at Reckong Peo, the winter kit you'll be issued for Kaza and Kibber, and the specific Losar dates confirmed for this year's departure.

Experience of the Day

–  Airport meet-and-greet and private transfer

–  Check-in and rest

–  Evening trip briefing on permits, winter kit and this year's confirmed Losar dates

Food

Hotel dinner; the kitchen can flag any dietary requirement noted at booking.

Activities to Do

• Settle in and adjust to the time zone

• Review the winter-kit checklist issued at briefing

Route: Delhi (day at leisure)

This day exists for one practical reason: the drive to Shimla tomorrow is the first of four long mountain-road days in a row, and starting it well-rested and properly kitted out matters more here than in most other Himalayan circuits, given how cold Kaza gets in February.

Guests who'd rather not spend the whole day resting can use the private car for Old Delhi (Jama Masjid, Chandni Chowk) or New Delhi (Humayun's Tomb, India Gate, Qutub Minar) — whichever suits, at your own pace.

Experience of the Day

–  Free morning and afternoon

–  Optional Old Delhi or New Delhi sightseeing by private car

–  Winter-gear issue and fitting: down jackets, thermal layers, gloves

Food

Breakfast at the hotel; lunch and dinner options in Delhi's own restaurant scene, recommended by your BizareXpedition contact on request.

Shopping

Khan Market or Dilli Haat for last-minute essentials before the mountain leg begins.

Activities to Do

• Old Delhi heritage walk (optional)

• New Delhi monuments circuit (optional)

• Final permit-document check with your BizareXpedition contact

Route: Delhi → Chandigarh → Shimla, approx. 342 km / 8–9 hours

The plains give way to the first hill roads a little past Chandigarh, and the temperature drops steadily for the rest of the drive. Shimla itself sits at 2,206 metres — a gentle first step up before the real altitude gain begins tomorrow.

The town's colonial-era core — the Mall, the Ridge, Christ Church — was built as the Raj's summer capital specifically because the elevation kept it cool when Delhi baked; in February the same elevation just means an early evening chill and, most years, leftover snow on the Ridge.

Experience of the Day

–  Full-day drive from Delhi

–  Evening walk on the Mall Road and the Ridge

–  Christ Church, Shimla's oldest church in North India

Food

Himachali dham thali or a Mall Road cafe dinner — Shimla's food scene runs both registers well.

Shopping

Mall Road for shawls, woollens and Kinnauri caps — useful here before the colder days ahead.

Activities to Do

• Evening Ridge and Mall Road walk

• Christ Church visit

Route: Shimla → Narkanda → Rampur → Kalpa, approx. 222 km / 7–8 hours

This is the day the road actually becomes the Kinnaur highway proper — narrower, cut into the gorge wall above the Sutlej, climbing in stages rather than one continuous grade. It is also the day that makes the whole route possible: this same NH-05 corridor stays open through winters that close the Manali side completely, because it never climbs over a high pass the way the Kunzum La crossing does.

Kalpa sits at 2,960 metres directly across the valley from the Kinnaur Kailash range, and the peaks catch the last and first light of the day before the valley floor does — worth being awake for, on either end.

Note on altitude: Kalpa is roughly 750 metres higher than Shimla. It's a manageable single-day gain, but drink water through the drive and take the evening slowly if you feel any lightheadedness.

Experience of the Day

–  Sutlej gorge drive through Narkanda and Rampur

–  First full views of the Kinnaur Kailash range on arrival

–  Evening at Kalpa, watching the range catch the last light

Food

Kinnauri rajma and buckwheat rotis — a local combination here, not found much further down the valley.

Activities to Do

• Evening viewpoint walk for the Kinnaur Kailash range

• Rest and acclimatise before tomorrow's permit checkpoint

Route: Kalpa → Reckong Peo → Nako → Sumdo → Tabo, approx. 155 km / 6–7 hours

Reckong Peo is where the paperwork actually happens: your Inner Line Permit, arranged in advance, is checked here before the road continues toward Nako and the high plateau. The landscape changes fast past this point — Kinnaur's pine-forested slopes give way to the bare, wind-carved rock of the trans-Himalayan cold desert within a couple of hours.

Nako's small lake and its cluster of centuries-old temples make a natural halfway stop. By the time the road drops into Tabo late in the afternoon, you're standing in one of the driest inhabited places in India — average annual rainfall here is measured in single-digit centimetres.

The Human Story

Tabo Monastery was founded in 996 CE by the translator-monk Rinchen Zangpo, and its mud-brick assembly hall still holds its original clay sculptures and wall paintings — not replicas, the actual 10th-century work. That survival isn't an accident of care alone: mud brick fails almost everywhere else in the world because moisture gets in and the walls slump or dissolve. Spiti's near-total absence of rain removed that threat entirely, which is the real reason a building this fragile in material has outlasted most stone monuments built centuries later elsewhere in the Himalayas. It is sometimes described as “UNESCO-listed,” which is not accurate — it is protected by the Archaeological Survey of India and has been proposed for UNESCO World Heritage status, but was never actually inscribed.

Experience of the Day

–  Reckong Peo Inner Line Permit checkpoint

–  Nako village, lake and its centuries-old temple cluster

–  Arrival at Tabo Monastery, founded 996 CE

Food

Thukpa and butter tea on arrival at Tabo — standard, and welcome, after a cold day's drive.

Activities to Do

• Tabo Monastery assembly hall and mural viewing (guided)

• Evening walk through Tabo village

Route: Tabo → Kaza, approx. 48 km / 1.5–2 hours

The shortest driving day of the trip, deliberately — Kaza sits at roughly 3,800 metres, another real step up from Tabo, and the rest of today is for settling in rather than sightseeing. Kaza is Spiti's administrative headquarters and, at Losar, its most visible centre of celebration: flags go up along the main street, and the town's own households begin their New Year preparations in the days immediately before the festival proper.

Winter nights here run roughly –12°C to –25°C. Every heated guesthouse used on this route runs a wood-burning bukhari stove in the guest rooms — the honest, real standard for this altitude and season, not a comfort claim dressed up as luxury.

Note on winter heating: Central heating does not exist in Kaza's winter guesthouse market at any price point. A bukhari stove, refuelled through the evening, is what every property here actually runs — stated plainly rather than left for you to discover on arrival.

Experience of the Day

–  Short scenic drive from Tabo

–  Acclimatisation afternoon in Kaza

–  First view of the town's Losar preparations

Food

Spitian thukpa, momos and salted butter tea — the everyday winter staples here.

Activities to Do

• Rest and acclimatise

• Evening walk through Kaza's main market street

Route: Kaza (local, on foot)

This is the day the whole trip is timed around, and it looks quieter than most people expect. Losar's own signature event in Spiti isn't a single staged performance; it's a town crier's New Year announcement, followed by musicians visiting homes in a fixed order of seniority, each stop marked with chang (barley beer) and cakes with pink icing. Whichever monastery is hosting that year's rotating new-year prayers and Cham dance — the schedule is confirmed closer to the date, since it moves between Spiti's monasteries year to year — you're taken to it as a guest of the occasion, not seated in a tourist enclosure built for it.

Homes are cleaned in advance and marked with flour-painted auspicious signs; cedar and juniper are burned as incense through the day. None of this is performed for visitors — it's simply what the town is doing on its own calendar, and you're there to see it happen.

Note on this year's dates: Losar follows the Tibetan lunar calendar and shifts by two to three weeks most years — see the Season Adjustments table for the confirmed Gregorian dates through 2029. BizareXpedition reconfirms the exact date and the host monastery for that year before departure.

The Human Story

The large, elaborately staged masked Cham dance most travel photography of “Spiti's Losar” actually shows is Key Monastery's own Gustor festival, held in July — moved there decades ago by the monastery's own leadership specifically so travellers who can't reach Spiti in a February snowstorm could still see it. It has nothing to do with Losar's actual date. What Losar keeps for itself is smaller: rotating monastery prayers and dances, on the community's own winter calendar, seen mostly by the people who live here.

Experience of the Day

–  Town crier's New Year announcement

–  Home-to-home visits by musicians, chang and cakes shared at each stop

–  Visit to that year's host monastery for Losar-time prayers and Cham dance (schedule confirmed closer to departure)

Food

Kapse (fried New Year pastries) and chang, offered widely through the day as part of the customs themselves — alongside a regular restaurant lunch and dinner.

Activities to Do

• Follow the town's New Year customs on foot

• Attend the host monastery's Losar prayers/Cham dance

Route: Kaza → Komic → Kibber → Kaza, approx. 50 km round trip

Komic and Kibber sit within a few kilometres of each other on the plateau above Kaza, and both are worth the climb. Tangyud Monastery, at Komic, belongs to the Sakya-Ngor lineage — one of only two Sakya monasteries left in Spiti, the rest being Gelug foundations like Key and Tabo. Its current fortress-like structure, with slanted mud walls and red-and-white battlements, most likely dates to the early 14th century, though an earlier Kadampa monastery on the same site is credited to Rinchen Zangpo himself.

Kibber, a short drive further, is one of the highest permanently inhabited villages in the world and sits at the edge of the Kibber Wildlife Sanctuary — roughly 2,220 square kilometres of snow leopard habitat, home to an estimated 30 of the animals, though a sighting is never guaranteed on a short winter visit like this one.

The Human Story

Tangyud Monastery has survived more than earthquakes and altitude. Records describe roughly 60 resident monks in 1855, and the monastery was repeatedly robbed between 1920 and 1940 before being significantly damaged again in the 1972 earthquake. That it still stands, actively used, on a canyon edge at 4,520 metres says more about the durability of the building's engineering — thick mud-brick walls built to lean inward against the cliff face — than about a quiet history.

Experience of the Day

–  Drive up to Komic and Tangyud Monastery

–  Kibber village and the edge of the Kibber Wildlife Sanctuary

–  Views over the plateau toward Chicham's suspension bridge

Food

Packed lunch carried up from Kaza — nothing is reliably open for a hot meal at this altitude in February.

Activities to Do

• Tangyud Monastery visit (guided)

• Kibber village walk

• Optional viewpoint stop for the Chicham Bridge, Asia's highest suspension bridge

Optional Nearby Excursions

Chicham Bridge viewpoint (weather-dependent, same half-day loop)

Route: Kaza → Dhankar → Key → Kaza, approx. 50 km round trip (weather-dependent)

This day exists on the schedule for one specific, disclosed reason: the Shichilling stretch of road between Tabo and Kaza is the route's real winter bottleneck, and it can close for anywhere from a few hours to, in a bad year, more than a week under heavy snowfall. Rather than pricing that uncertainty into the trip, one full day is held free here at no extra cost, so a closure earlier in the week doesn't cost you Losar itself.

If the road stays clear and the buffer isn't needed for its primary purpose, the day runs as a visit to Dhankar — Spiti's former capital, its monastery built directly into a cliff edge above the confluence of the Spiti and Pin rivers — and Key Monastery, Spiti's largest, with roughly 250 resident monks today after a history of being destroyed and rebuilt more than once.

Note on the buffer day: If the road has closed earlier in the trip and this day is needed to hold your place in Kaza until it reopens, Dhankar and Key are dropped without charge. BizareXpedition also recommends holding your return international flight with 2–3 days of slack for exactly this reason.

Experience of the Day

–  Dhankar Monastery, built into the cliff above the Spiti-Pin confluence (if road conditions allow)

–  Key Monastery, Spiti's largest, roughly 250 resident monks (if road conditions allow)

–  Otherwise: a free day in Kaza to continue following Losar's home-visit customs

Food

Local Kaza restaurant lunch and dinner; Dhankar has a small tea stall if the excursion runs.

Activities to Do

• Dhankar Monastery and viewpoint (weather-dependent)

• Key Monastery visit (weather-dependent)

• Free day in Kaza as fallback

Route: Kaza → Tabo → Nako → Reckong Peo → Kalpa, approx. 200 km / 7–8 hours

The return runs the whole Kaza-to-Kalpa stretch in one day rather than splitting it with a second Tabo night, since the monastery and the town have already been seen outbound. It's a long day in the vehicle, but it's the same road you already know, run in daylight, with an early start recommended while the surface is still firm.

Experience of the Day

–  Full-day return drive through Tabo and Nako

–  Second view of the Kinnaur Kailash range on arrival at Kalpa

Food

Packed lunch en route; dinner at Kalpa on arrival.

Activities to Do

• Rest on arrival at Kalpa

Route: Kalpa → Rampur → Narkanda → Shimla, approx. 222 km / 7 hours

The road out of Kinnaur feels different in reverse — you're descending out of the cold desert and back into pine forest by the time Narkanda comes into view, with the temperature climbing steadily through the day.

Arrival in Shimla by evening leaves time for a last unhurried walk on the Mall before the final leg to Delhi tomorrow.

Experience of the Day

–  Full-day return drive via Rampur and Narkanda

–  Evening arrival in Shimla

Food

Dinner on Shimla's Mall Road.

Activities to Do

• Evening Mall Road walk

Route: Shimla → Chandigarh → Delhi, approx. 342 km / 8 hours

The last day is simple: the drive back to Delhi, a day-use room to rest and change before a long flight, and a private transfer to the airport timed to your departure. Trip ends here.

Experience of the Day

–  Full-day drive back to Delhi

–  Day-use room for rest before your flight

–  Private transfer to the airport

Food

Lunch en route; final meal at your own discretion in Delhi.

Activities to Do

• Rest before departure