In order to penetrate Tibet and reach Lhasa, Madame Alexandra David-Neel used her fluency of Tibetan dialects and culture, and inked skin and tackled some of the roughest terrain and climate in the World. This title presntes her intensive study and daring adventure in mysterious territories of the East.
An exemplary travelogue of danger and achievement by the Frenchwoman Madame Alexandra David–Neel of her 1923 expedition to Tibet, the fifth in her series of Asian travels, and her personal recounting of her journey to Lhasa, Tibet's forbidden city.
In order to penetrate Tibet and reach Lhasa, she used her fluency of Tibetan dialects and culture, disguised herself as a beggar with yak hair extensions and inked skin and tackled some of the roughest terrain and climate in the World. With the help of her young companion, Yongden, she willingly suffered the primitive travel conditions, frequent outbreaks of disease, the ever–present danger of border control and the military to reach her goal.
The determination and sheer physical fortitude it took for this woman, delicately reared in Paris and Brussels, is inspiration for men and women alike.
David–Neel is famous for being the first Western woman to have been received by any Dalai Lama and as a passionate scholar and explorer of Asia, hers is one of the most remarkable of all travellersߴales.
“My Journey to Lhasa . . . involves us intensely. . . . [David-Neel’s] descriptions of the landscape are fervent and her understanding of the Tibetans admirably unsentimental. Her Tibet is not at all the philosophers’ kingdom of Lost Horizon; it is a fierce, filthy, frequently dangerous place, where she had to exercise the utmost ingenuity to survive.”
