Because of the cold climate, the buildings in NepalĀ“s alpine region are compact and placed close together to protect the house from strong cold winds. To gain solar heat, the houses are located in the Southern part of the slope or in flat valleys. Usually they connect the houses so only one to two walls face the open environment. Therefore, many houses have a courtyard which allows day light in to almost all rooms. In the region of Upper mustang two stories courtyard buildings are dominant. Like the Newar houses, the space arrangement is also vertical as for the same reason. The ground floor is used as a buffer, but in contrary to Kathmandu they usually house animals here to increase the indoor temperature. Their main living room, located in the second floor, is surrounded by rooms of secondary use, and this makes a horizontal buffer zone. Because of the low precipitation, the roofs are usually flat, to make a good space for activity during sunny days. There is a praying room or a sleeping room for summer is located in the upper floor and gives another buffer to the main living room.
For the walls they use mud and mud brick, which is used because it is the highest insulating material available and makes the walls of high thermal mass to balance the temperature range. They need to protect the flat roof from the wet snow in the early winter months, this is done with a layer of fine white mud. The room height is normally very low to reduce the need of heating. In contrast to the Newar houses the windows are very small and are used mainly to let the smoke from the kitchen out. They use shutters to reduce infiltration of cold air.
To summarize, the houses in Upper mustang villages are built to reduce heat loss in the winter. They have small openings, and the internal space arrangement uses buffer zones to keep the most used areas at a comfortable temperature. The villages are dense and houses packed together to protection against the cold wind. These types of houses are very well adapted to the local climate.