my journey to lhasa alexandra david neel

On seeing Potala Palace, the winter palace of the Dalai Lama since the 7th century and the highest ancient palace in the world, she wrote that “golden roofs glittered in the blue sky, sparks seeming to spring from their sharp upturned corners, as if the whole castle, the glory of Tibet, had been crowned with flames.”

Potala Palace ( Flickr user reurinkjan, CC-BY-2.0)įour months into their treacherous journey, David-Néel and Yongden arrived in the holy city of Lhasa. ( Elizabeth Meyer, CC-BY-2.0)įinding Japan too tame for their tastes, David-Néel and Yongden took the dangerous journey east to west across the Chinese empire, covering 5,000 miles by mule, yak, horse, and foot while the country was collapsing into civil war. Instead she went further east, studying at the monasteries of Korea and Japan with the 15 year-old Aphur Yongden, a perceptive Sikkimese lama who would become her lifelong companion and adopted son. It was the height of WWI and she was unable to return to Europe, or Tunis.

She traveled to listen and learn.ĭavid-Néel had promised Mouchy that she wouldn’t be gone for too long, but she had already been in India for years by the time British forces expelled her in 1916, for “trespassing” into Tibet, which was forbidden. But David-Néel didn’t possess the sense of cultural or national superiority that such an outfit conveyed. While it was acceptable, even fashionable, to study comparative religion from a distance, to actively don the orange robes, particularly as a woman, was scandalous at the time when the only acceptable costume for European women in the Orient was a long-sleeved white dress, white gloves, broad-brimmed hat, and - of course - a lacy parasol.

My journey to lhasa alexandra david neel