Voyage au Tibet interdit

Alexandra David-Néel (1868-1969) was a French explorer, anarchist, spiritualist, Buddhist and writer, most widely known for her visit to Lhasa, Tibet in 1924, at a time when it was closed to foreigners. In 1890 and 1891, she travelled through India, returning only when running out of money. On a second visit to India in 1911, to further her study of Buddhism, Alexandra was invited to the royal monastery of Sikkim, where she met Maharaj Kumar (crown prince) Sidkeon Tulku, becoming his confidante and spiritual sister. She also met the 13th Dalai Lama twice in 1912, and had the opportunity to ask him many questions about Buddhism – a feat unprecedented for a European woman at that time.

In the period 1914-1916 she lived in a cave in Sikkim, near the Tibetan border, studying with the young Sikkimese monk Aphur Yongden, who became her lifelong travelling companion, and whom she would adopt later. Together, they trespassed into Tibetan territory, meeting the Panchen Lama in Shigatse in August 1916. In 1924, Alexandra, with Aphur Yongden, returned clandestinely to Lhasa, the Forbidden City, at the end of a journey of eight months traversing the Himalaya during the harsh winter conditions, disguised as a Tibetan beggar.

Alexandra David-Néel wrote over 30 books about Eastern religion, philosophy, and her travels. Her teachings influenced beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and philosopher Alan Watts. Her most famous book, Voyage d'une Parisienne à Lhassa, was published in 1927, a year after her return to France.

80 years later, Priscilla Telmon journeys alone in the footsteps of this and other journeys of Alexandra David-Néel. She takes a route beginning in Hanoi, through the jungle of Vietnam and the forbidden valleys of Yunnan, populated by some of the rarest ethnic tribes in the world. Across the great Himalaya range to the monasteries of Lhasa in Tibet, the war-torn regions of Sikkim and south to the congested Bengal capital, Calcutta.

More profoundly, her journey becomes a double adventure. One in the physical and spiritual footsteps of Alexandra, which she attempts to reconstruct. The other, more personal, through the vastness of a wild and eternal Tibet that seems determined to escape the march of the twenty-first century. Priscilla's journey shows that with the difficulties of travelling and the prohibition of entry, little has changed on the Roof of the World since Alexandra's time.