Thoughts of a Girl ^_^: Female Adventurer.. (3)

.."Alexandra David-Néel"..

Alexandra was Born in Paris, Saint-Mandé, on October 24, 1868. she was a Belgian-French explorer, anarchist, spiritualist, Buddhist and writer, most known for her visit to Lhasa, Tibet, in 1924, when it was forbidden to foreigners(wikipedia).

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Alexandrine Marie David was the only daughter of a French father of Huguenot ancestry and a Catholic mother of Scandinavian origin.

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Very early she displayed her most characteristic personality traits, in sharp contrast with her severe, austere, bourgeois parental environment. She was a proud, fiercely individualistic child, yearning for freedom.

She ran away from home several times to flee this dour loveless home, attracted by travels to faraway initiatory lands, to satisfy the need for escape she felt to the end of her life.

At the age of 18, she had already visited England, Switzerland and Spain on her own(wikipedia).

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She traveled to India, Sikkim, Japan many times but she is more famous for her unique experiences as a foreigner living in Tibet for an extended period of time.

In the period 1914 - '16 she lived in a cave in Sikkim, near the Tibetan border, learning spirituality, together with the Tibetan monk Aphur Yongden, who became her lifelong travelling companion, and whom she would later adopt (Alexandra David-Néel.org).

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At age 54, David-Néel was the first European woman to venture into Tibet's capital, Lhasa. Disguising herself as a pilgrim, she journeyed into Tibet's 'forbidden city' in 1932. She died in Digne, France, in 1969 at the age of 101, and a museum is kept there in her honour.

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She wrote several books...

1- My Journey to Lhasa: The Classic Story of the Only Western Woman Who Succeeded in Entering the Forbidden City..