Customer Reviews

My Journey to Lhasa

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When I was reading the reviews of this book, I was struck by the one of the reviews. It was very negative, and the reviewer missed the beauty of this book entirely. I was glad that I had already read it. I read the reviews because I was curious to see if others had enjoyed the book as much as I did. I was buying it again as a present for a friend. The author was a very unusual person, and this book is very much worth the read. She wrote about customs and values honestly as she saw them. She was not a dispassionate viewer, but I also felt that she was not judgemental or superior. When customs of two peoples are as different as some of Tibet and France are, they will shock a person and that person will remark. However, I felt that she loved and respected the people she wrote about, and she did a remarkable job in recounting what she saw. She gave her readers the pleasure of a most unusual journey with her and her young companion through a country that was worth writing about.

My Journey to Lhasa is a marvellous, cliff hanging tale of adventure comparable to Lawrence of Arabia's epic account. David-Neel made her trek to forbidden lhasa in the dead of winter succeeding where much younger, better equipped male explorers failed. Her thrilling yarn is the main highlight of a 101 year adventure packed life.This noted Buddhist scholar wrote 25 books on eastern themes after she made her death defying trip in her mid fifties. Although naysayers have claimed that David-Neel never went to Lhasa, our extensive research for our biography the Secret Lives of Alexandra David-Neel authenticates her travels as well as fleshes out the human aspect of this amazing character who Lawrence Durrell called "the mot astohishing Frenchwoman of our Times."

This is a book which I think of often. Ms. David-Neel had or should I say has quite a strong spirit. I would recommend all of her books to anyone interested in spiritual growth, women's triumphs or walking accross high Himalayan passes in the dead of winter with the Lama Yongden. I cross high Rocky Mountain passes regularly, but always in the comfort of an 18-wheeler.

In 1923 at the age of 55, Alexandra David-Neel put on the robes of a Buddhist monk and walked across Tibet for four months on a pilgrimmage to the holy city of Lhasa. No European woman had ever entered the holy city before, and the road promised many dangers, from wild animals to blizzards to bandits. Her descriptions bear witness to a spunky evolved soul whose scholarly knowledge of Buddhism served her well in her adopted role as an itinerant monk. Her writing is elegant, punctuated by an unselfconscious humor and relentless perspicacity. Truly an adventure trek of many wonders.

This story of a solo woman, over 50, travelling in a strange country in the early 1900's should be read by every woman who is wondering if they dare travel anywhere. Once you read Alexandra's story of her journey to Lhasa in Tibet, you will never be afraid to travel anywhere in the world. Her incredible courage, her determination and her love of Tibetan people and culture make this one of the best reads in a very long time.

This is most certainly a worth while book to spend some time with. Reading these early Buddhist-travel journals is a rare pleasure indeed. If you are looking for something similar, and in many ways more enchanting, check out John Blofeld's book, "The Wheel of Life: The Autobiography of a Western Buddhist." The time periods are similar with Neel's, but Blofeld spends most of his time not in Tibet, but in China, exporing back woods monasteries and meeting up with taoists and other mountain ascetics. It's just wonderful.

Every warm-blooded traveler knows that to savor a journey, to experience a journey, one has to become the journey. Of course, that same traveler will also tell you that typically that also means parking one's notions of comfort at home in exchange for rewards that happily outstrip bodily discomfiture, because places of intense emotion reveal themselves only to the hardy and the intrepid.

But this story chronicles a veritable traveler boot camp! To bed down on rocks, sleep on snow, go hungry, thirsty and unclean, travel by starlight, dangle from a rope over a gorge, beg for food, awaken to the snuffle of wild predators... all this by a woman, almost a 100 years ago, 55 years old and on the run. I thrill and shudder at once and envy her the journey sometimes (and not so much at other times!).

I recently had a tantalizing taste of Tibet's fantasmagoric beauty - like that of a land spellbound by unscrupulous sorcery, where life is harsh, unforgiving, unbending but so endowed by natural splendor that one is unable to escape its thrall. As her adventure unfolds in this well-paced account, I could imagine her tramping through these fabled lands, forging through fog-filled valleys, melting into the moonshine or greeting a golden sunrise at the end of a hard night's trek. I regret that she doesn't pause to paint a fuller picture of what must have been spectacular scenery.

It is also interesting to sketch her personality through her own pen. The portrait that emerges is that of a strong-willed, intelligent, somewhat arrogant woman of unwavering determination, gritty endurance and one who loves a challenge. I have to applaud her unconditionally for the original motivation that launched her on this endeavor. She would have made a great CEO in our times.

Yes, the style is a little dated, as one reviewer commented, but why should that be surprising? This is a period piece. I find her use of Tibetan words occasionally distracting and the Introduction by Diana Rowan is downright hagiographic and entirely dispensable, or at least, deferrable until the end of the author's own story.

If you are a traveler at heart this travelogue cannot fail to touch you.

Personally, I love this book and have read it more than three times. If, for no other reason, you have an interest in Tibet prior to the Chinese invasion in 1950, this book leaves for posterity a Tibet that no longer exists. The border is gone from modern maps, but even a Westerners' interpretation of their daily lives, is treasure to us all of what once was, a free and spiritually ruled Tibet.

The Chinese have a built a "Disneyland" at the foot of Potalla Palace. I need to remember it before the modern attempt at Chinesification of Tibet.

My Journey to Lhasa is a well written book about Tibet circa 1919. Alas, the country that Alexandra David-Neel describes in her travels is no more. The Chinese have butchered and degraded the native population and ethnic Chinese are the majority of the population in the capital city of Lhasa.

David-Neel made her trek with her adopted son to the forbidden city Lhasa (where no foreigners were allowed) in the dead of winter succeeding where much younger, better equipped male-only explorers failed. This religious pilgrimage is the main highlight of this strong-willed French woman's 101 year adventure packed career. She was a noted Buddhist scholar and wrote 25 books on eastern themes after she made her death defying trip in her mid-fifties. This book reads as fresh today as when it was written over 90 years ago. Ms. David-Neel's command of the English language is better than most native speakers.

I personally didn't like the ending to her journey. Soon after she had achieved her goal of setting foot in the Forbidden City, she had no problem in identifying herself as a French woman and allowing herself the protective care of the British supervised Indian Army escort. It would have been elegant of her to have crossed back into India anonymously just as she had begun her journey crossing into Tibetan territory anonymously.

All I really need to say is not in review of Mrs David Neel's book but to remark that I read somewhere in your bewildering pages that she went to Lhasa disguised as a man, which seems to demonstrate that whoever wrote that hadn't bothered to read her book. According to her version she was disguised as an old Tibetan Woman from western Tibet, the mother of the Lama, Yongden, who she claims to have adopted and who remained with her for the rest of his life according to other bits and pieces I have gleaned over the years. Somebody,probably Sydney Smith, said he never read books he had to review because it would influance his preconceptions so, or something like that. The trouble with putting lies into print is that people are inclined to believe the printed word. "Of course its bloody true." he said "Didn't I read it in the bloody paper."