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 The Sage of Digne
the life of Alexandra David-Neel, 1868 - 1969
by Barbara & Michael Foster

Excerpts:

       Alexandra David-Neel is known for her daring journey from southwest China to Lhasa, Tibet over the Trans-Himalayas during the winter of 1923. Traveling with her adopted Tibetan son, Lama Yongden, she disguised herself as a beggar to elude the soldiers, brigands and agents of the British Empire who hunted her. She was the first European woman to reach Tibet’s forbidden capital . . .

. . .

. . . On her journey to Lhasa, Alexandra traveled with a necklace of gold coins hidden in a plain leather purse. The necklace was a gift from Sidkeong Tulku, the young, handsome Maharaja of Sikkim, whom she met in 1912. She refused to spend any of the coins, no matter how desperate her need — at times she had to scrounge for her next meal, even boil up shoe leather. Sidkeong alone had touched the romantic core of a woman who prided herself on trumping the hardiest male explorers. But their love was not to be. In 1914 Sidkeong, who led the reform party in his tiny Himalayan country, was poisoned at court, probably by his stepmother with British connivance. He died after four days of excruciating pain.
       Despair drove Alexandra to seclude herself from the world in a cave hideaway with the Tibetan master who became her guru. The Gomchen of Lachen, stout and ugly, kept the peasants in his mountain village agog. They believed he could fly through the air, kill men by a glance, and command demons . . . 

. . .

. . . All told, Alexandra traveled through and explored, in every sense, India, Sikkim, Nepal, French Indo-China (Vietnam), Japan, Korea, China and finally Tibet. There she found a country the size of Western Europe, but without roads or wheeled vehicles. From 1921 to 1924, she trekked across the Land of Snows, visiting and studying in its ancient and esteemed monasteries (more like small cities), conversing with hermits who lived high up in the mountains in caves, and consorting with bands of so-called gentlemen brigands. With little more than a watch and compass to guide her, she went where no Westerner has gone before or since. When asked why, she replied, “Adventure is my only reason for living.”
 

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