Nyemo county lies along the Nyemo Chu river about 150 kilometres west of Lhasa, on the road towards Shigatse. It is a farming valley with two villages that matter for anyone interested in Tibetan craft, and both of them are reached in a single day from Lhasa with a guide and vehicle.
Tunba and Tibetan incense
Tunba village is the historic centre of Tibetan incense making, and local tradition holds that Thonmi Sambhota - the minister credited with creating the Tibetan script in the seventh century - came from here. The village makes incense by hand from a base of juniper and other woods combined with herbs, spices and medicinal plants; recipes run to dozens of ingredients, and the material is pressed into sticks or cones, dried in the sun and bundled. In many houses the work is done in the courtyard, and you can watch, smell the raw materials and buy directly from the family that made it. The smell is warmer and less perfumed than Indian incense, and the bundles travel easily.
Xuelha and handmade paper
Xuelha village is known for Tibetan paper, made from the root of a plant with a bitter, mildly toxic sap - the name translates roughly as wolf poison - which is beaten into a pulp, poured into a frame and dried in the sun. The result resists insects and does not rot quickly, which is why it has been used for monastery texts for centuries. The paper is grey-brown and fibrous, and it can be written on with bamboo pens. Workshops here sell sheets, notebooks and printed sutra pages, and it is one of the few genuinely hand-made souvenirs left in Tibet.
Practical notes
Both villages are in Nyemo county, a long but interesting drive from Lhasa, usually combined in one day with a stop at the river and at a local farmhouse for lunch. Foreign visitors need the correct permits and a licensed guide, which you arrange through a Tibetan travel agency; you cannot simply hire a car and go. Bring cash - village workshops may not accept cards or apps - and take cash in small notes.
Why it is worth the drive
Most Tibetan itineraries are monasteries and landscapes. Nyemo shows a different part of the culture: village-based manufacturing, still using methods that have barely changed, in the hands of the families that own them.
