My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David-Néel

She became interested in Asia from her trips to the Guimet Museum in Paris. Louise Eugénie Alexandrine Marie David was born on October 24, 1868, in Paris, France. Her teachings influenced Beat poets like Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and proponents of Eastern philosophy in the Western world, Alan Watts and Ram Dass. She published more than 30 books about Eastern philosophy, religion, and her travels.

In 1924, at age 55, she was the first Western woman to enter the Tibetan city of Lhasa, when Tibet’s borders were closed to foreigners. 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.Alexandra David-Néel was a French writer, explorer, and Buddhist scholar. descriptions of the landscape are fervent and her understanding of the Tibetans admirably unsentimental. Her account has the power to awe even today.” - Outside magazine “David-Neel was indisputably a fearless traveler, a rogue’s rogue. This is a lively account of her journey and a classic portrait of Tibet, its region, and its people.” - Bloomsbury Review “In 1923, at the age of fifty-five, the author disguised herself as a pilgrim and made her way to Tibet’s forbidden city of Lhasa. A striking portrait of the Tibetan people and their culture, as seem by a most remarkable woman.” - Good Books for the Curious Reader “As a traveler, she has performed a brilliant feat.” - New Statesman “The sort of thriller yarn that keeps you up all night and is too soon over.” - Ms. “A scholar of Eastern religion and Tibetan language, David-Neel was indisputably a fearless traveler, a rogue’s rogue who, in 1923, disguised as an illiterate pilgrim, became the first Western woman to reach Tibet’s forbidden city.

frequently dangerous place, where she had to exercise the utmost ingenuity to survive.” - New York Times Book Review Her Tibet is not at all the philosophers’ kingdom of Lost Horizon it is a fierce. involves us intensely in a world that no longer exists-that of free Tibet.

My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David-Néel