The space of nondegenerate curves on the n-sphere subject to a fixed monodromy matrix (provided with a suitable Hilbert manifold structure) is decomposed into a countable collection of contractible cells parameterized by the SOn+1-lifted curves admissible itineraries through cells arriving from a stratification of SOn+1 closely related to the classical Bruhat decomposition of GLn+1. The expression admissible itinerary herein stands for a finite sequence of cells subject to a few constraints that are otherwise naturally suggested by the geometry of the problem. The main interest of such a new approach is that this combinatorialization works homogeneously in any dimension n (with obvious computational difficulties), unlike the more geometry-flavoured ad-hoc methods for achieving topological information about these and related spaces of curves (which usually have had a good run only in low dimensions n). This approach can be regarded as a first attempt at a unified method for figuring out the homotopy-type of such spaces, and it helps to override some functional analysis arguments usually deployed in defining the right topology for these spaces of curves.