alexandra david néel my journey to lhasa

In an age when even those sympathetic to the East were mostly dabblers or lovers of the occult, Alexandra David-Néel distinguished herself both as a scholar and a practitioner. She left four projects unfinished when she died just short of her 101st birthday. On her return to Europe, she was celebrated as an adventuress and lived another 45 years as a lecturer and writer. Niel did not understand his wife’s interest in Buddhism and the East, but in 1910 he offered her a “long voyage”- he meant something like a year- to “get it out of her system.” She was gone for fourteen years, traveling and living in India, Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Japan, making forays into the forbidden kingdom of Tibet. It was not until middle age that she married Philippe Néel, the French engineer who supported her through her subsequent adventures, but with whom she almost never lived. Her early adulthood was taken up by a career as an opera singer- ample accomplishment for an ordinary life, but almost overlooked in hers. At the age of 16 she was already running away from home for jaunts across Europe, and she traveled to India at 21. It is tempting to think that she was born too soon, but so free and bold a female spirit would have encountered obstacles anywhere, at any time. In between she spent fourteen years studying Buddhism in Asia and, at the age of 55, became the first Western woman to enter the Tibetan city of Lhasa. She was born in France in 1868, the period of la belle epoque, and died there in 1969, soon after the student riots in Paris. Alexandra David-Néel in Tibetan traveling dress.Īlexandra David-Néel lived 100 years.

Alexandra david néel my journey to lhasa