Alexandra David-Néel

Alexandra David was born near Paris and ran away from home repeatedly as a girl. She studied Sanskrit and Eastern religions at the Sorbonne and the Musée Guimet, wrote anarchist pamphlets under a pseudonym, and supported herself for years as an opera singer touring Indochina, Greece and Tunisia. In 1904 she married a railway engineer, Philippe Néel. They lived apart for most of their marriage but wrote to each other for decades, and he paid for much of her travelling.

In 1911 she left for what was supposed to be an eighteen-month journey to India. She stayed away for fourteen years. In Sikkim she met the thirteenth Dalai Lama, then in exile, and took as her companion a young monk, Aphur Yongden, whom she later adopted. She spent two winters in a cave hermitage at nearly 4,000 metres studying with a Tibetan master, and was expelled from Sikkim by the British for crossing into Tibet without permission.

Tibet was closed to foreigners. In 1923, aged 55, she and Yongden set out from Yunnan on foot, she with her face darkened with soot and her hair blackened with ink, posing as his elderly mother on pilgrimage. They walked through the winter over passes above 5,000 metres, sleeping in the open and begging for food. In February 1924 they entered Lhasa and stayed for two months unrecognised.

She came home to a fame she used to write more than thirty books. She renewed her passport at 100, in case she wished to travel again, and died a few months later.