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.

Burke and Wills - Across Australia

Australia is a huge country, and the outback (the Australian word for the interior of the country) is desert. In some years, it rains only 8 centimeters in the outback, but in other years, rainstorms turn the desert into sandy swamps. Until the eighteenth century, only aborigines lived in Australia. These are the first people who lived in Australia. When Europeans went there to live, they built town on the coast. However, by the 1850s, people began thinking more about the interior.

In 1860, Robert O’ Hara Burke, a police officer from Ireland, was chosen to lead an expedition across the continent from south to north. He took with him William John Wills and eleven other men, camels, horses, and enough supplies for a year and a half. They left Melbourne for the Gulf of Carpentaria on August 20, winter in the southern hemisphere. The expedition had no experience in the outback. The men fought and would not follow orders. Twice they left some of their supplies so they could move faster and later sent one of the men, William Wright, back for them.