Alexandra David-Neel - A French Woman in Tibet

Tibet has been a secret and mysterious place to the rest of the world for several centuries. It is on a high plateau in Asia, surrounded by even higher mountains, and only a few foreigners were able to cross its borders until recently. One of these foreigners was a French woman named Alexandra Devid-Neel (1868-1969). She traveled by herself in India, China, and Tibet. She studied the Buddhist religion, wrote articles and books about it, and collected ancient Buddhist books. She also became a Buddhist herself. Alexandra always said she had an unhappy childhood. She escaped her unhappiness by reading books on adventure and travel. She ran away to England when she was only sixteen. She was a singer for several years, but in 1903 she started working as a journalist, writing articles about Asia and Buddhism for English and French magazines and newspapers. The next year, when she was thirty-seven, she married Philippe-François Neel. It was a strange marriage. After 5 days together, they moved to different cities and never lived together again. Yet he supported her all his life, and she wrote him hundreds of letters full of details about her travels.

She traveled all over Europe and North Africa, but she went to India in 1911 to study Buddhism, and then her real travels began.

She traveled in India and also in Nepal and Sikkim, the small countries north of India in the Himalaya Mountains, but her goal was Tibet. She continued to study Buddhism and learned to speak Tibetan. She traveled to villages and religious centers, with only an interpreter and a few men to carry her camping equipment. For several months, she lived in a cave in Sikkim and studied Buddhism and the Tibetan language. The she adopted a fifteen-year-old Sikkimese boy to travel with her. He remained with her until his death at the age of fifty-five.

For the next 7 years, she traveled in remote areas of China. These were years of civil war in China, and she was often in danger. She traveled for thousands of kilometers on horseback with only a few men to help her – through desert heat, sandstorms, and the rain, snow, and freezing temperatures of the colder areas. In1924, David-Neel was fifty-six years old. She darkened her skin and dressed as an old beggar. She carried only a beggars’ bowl and a backpack and traveled through hot lowlands and snowy mountain passes until she reached the border of Tibet. Because she spoke Tibetan so well, she was able to cross the border and reach the famous city of Lhasa without anyone knowing that she was European and forbidden to be there. It was often freezing cold, and sometimes there wasn’t enough food. Sometimes she was sick, and once she nearly died. This was the most dangerous of all her journeys, but she reached her goal and collected more information about Tibetan Buddhism. She returned to France in 1925. She spent several years writing about her research and adventures and translating ancient Tibetan religious books. When she was sixty-six, she returned to China and the Tibetan border area for 10 years. In1944, the Second World War reached even that remote area, and at the age of seventy-six, she walked for days, sometimes without food, until she was able to reach a place where she could fly to India and then home to France. She continued writing and translating until she died, just 7 weeks before her 101^st birthday.

Most explorers traveled to discover and map new places. David-Neel went to do research on Buddhism. She said that freedom was the most important thing in life for her, and like many other explorers, she lived a dangerous, exciting, free life.