Gregor and I eventually decide to explore Dege town and pay a visit to the Scripture Printing Lamasery, an old school printing press for Tibetan prayers/chants.
Wearing my disguise, Gregor and I make our way to the lamasery and first perform a Kora (clockwise lap around the place) to scope it out. With Gregor some distance behind me, I make a move for the interior of the lamasery, walking past the ticket seller to get in for free as a Tibetan. It doesn’t work, he calls out to me and I’m forced to buy a ticket.
Lamasery entrance with Tibetans walking the Kora around it.
Nevertheless, I decide to persevere with the disguise and walk around without removing it. The disguise partially works, people more than 10m away don’t pay me any attention, however when someone does see that I’m a foreigner, they call out to the others who stop what they’re doing walk up to me and peer at my eyes/mouth under the balaclava, confirm I am white and say hello.
Busted by the workers and sweating heavily in the heat, I remove the disguise deciding it was fun but won’t really work and meet up with Gregor to tell him the news about the failure.
Although the lamasery has a rule against photography, the Chinese tourists inside are happily taking photos and the workers pay them no attention. Feeling brave, I take out my camera and take one photo. As soon as I do this, one of the workers approaches Gregor and I, looks at the photo I took and takes the camera from me. The man then proceeds to take photos of all of his colleagues and the work they do.
To make a print, the workers, always in pairs, take a clay tablet containing the scripture, coat it using a naturally made ink and press a sheet of fabric to it to print the scripture on it.
To get an idea of how much scripture there is, imagine two storeys of six rows. Every row has a shelf and in each shelf lie hundreds of these tablets, it all adds up to a lot of work.
The photographer and myself (out of disguise).
The view from the second floor.
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