The Barkhor is a pilgrimage circuit and a market, and among the stalls selling turquoise, boots, incense and butter lamps there are bookshops that most visitors walk past. Tibet has a long and serious textual culture - printing by woodblock began early and monasteries maintained libraries for centuries - and the bookshops of Lhasa carry a range that runs from canonical scripture to modern Tibetan-language fiction.
What is on the shelves
The core of any Lhasa bookshop is Buddhist: editions of the canon, single sutras printed for devotional use, commentaries, the ritual texts used daily in monasteries, and biographies of teachers. Alongside these are Tibetan medicine and pharmacy books, works on astrology and the Tibetan calendar, histories and chronicles, collections of folk tales and proverbs, and the great epic of Gesar, which is enormous and exists in many versions. Poetry and modern writing in Tibetan have grown over recent decades, and there is a small but real contemporary Tibetan-language literature. Chinese-language sections cover the same ground plus history, art and travel. Most shops also stock a modest English shelf: introductions to Buddhism, histories of Tibet, translations of classics, maps and phrasebooks.
Why it is worth an hour
Bookshops are a good place to get past the visual cliché of Tibet. The block-printed sutras with their long rectangular pages, the loose-leaf format, the thick paper and the carved wooden covers are beautiful objects in their own right, and many shops will let you handle them. Thangka reproductions, block prints and calligraphy sets are also sold here, often of better quality and lower price than in the tourist stalls outside. If you read no Tibetan or Chinese, buy something with images - medical diagrams, astrological charts or the paintings in a printed thangka album are legible without the language.
Practical notes
The bookshops are in the lanes around the Barkhor and along the main streets of the old city, and they keep ordinary shop hours, seven days a week. Some of the larger shops have English sections near the front, and staff will rarely speak English but will happily accept pointing. Books are heavy, so bear in mind your luggage allowance before buying a multi-volume set. Remember that religious texts are treated with respect in Tibet - do not put them on the floor, and handle them carefully before deciding to buy.
