April 18, 2023: Remote Village Temple with Woodblocks and Thangkas

Good morning! Today was a beautiful and rugged adventure trekking through the Himalayas to a small village temple. The temple caretaker was on his way to an event in a nunnery in the adjacent village, but since we met him on the path, he turned around and escorted us to our destination with the key. The temple is high on a hill towards the icy mountain tops, with Tibet on the other side of the peaks.

On either side of the copper covered prayer wheel, we found hand carved wooden blocks used to print traditional Buddhist texts. The caretaker told us the in previous generations, there was a hand printing press down in the village but that it no longer existed and these blocks remained from it. It would be good to have them read by a scholar.

We also appreciated the fine, thin, traditional paper of several of the texts within the temple.

Inside the temple, there were thangkas hanging up of diverse ages and styles. After examining each one, it was clear that each had a story and that I would be asking the head of the village about the stories.
A series of thangkas of Buddhist arhats, for example, had centuries old traditional brocade surrounds, with 100 year old paintings inserted in, painted by a village painter, the original paintings had been removed. A few of the other thangkas were damaged by water and by traditional worship (butter lamps and insense grit) however the original paintings were still visible in details. We could try digital restoration on high density images of each to complete the iconography without damaging the original.

At the end of the day, we thanked the caretaker and returned to our host monastery to write our reports.