alexandra david néel my journey to lhasa

Always wanting to be somewhere other than where she was, she longed for adventure: “I learned to run before I could walk!”Īt the age of 15 while spending school holidays with her parents at the Belgian city of Ostende on the coast of West Flanders, Alexandra ran away and reached the port of Vlissingen in the Netherlands before turning back. She became an avid reader often losing herself in the imaginary worlds of science fiction and visionary ascetic saints. They would walk together through the ongoing demolition created by Baron Haussmann’s redesign of Paris, the city from which she longed to escape. As a child, her father used to take her to the Gare de Vincennes and Gare de Lyon to watch trains come and go.

Her father, Louis David (a distant relative and namesake of the renowned artist, Jacques-Louis David) was a Hugenot Freemason, left-leaning journalist and teacher, and her mother, Alexandrine Borghmans, a Catholic native of Belgium.įrom her earliest memories Alexandra was bedeviled by wanderlust. The only child of an unfortunate marriage, Louise Eugénie Alexandrine Marie David was born on October 24, 1868, in Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, in between the Bois de Vincennes and the defensive wall surrounding Paris. During her life, which spanned almost 101 years, she wrote more than 30 books on eastern religions and remains today the most authoritative source on Tibetan Buddhism. Scaling 19,000-foot peaks without supplementary oxygen and wearing crude leather boots. In 1924, at the age of 55, she was the first European woman to cross the Trans-Himalayas in the dead of winter to reach the forbidden city of Lhasa in Tibet. French explorer, author, and Buddhist scholar, Alexandra David-Néel led a full and exceptional life.

Alexandra david néel my journey to lhasa