Magic and Mystery in Tibet

Born in 1868 to a respectable French family, Alexandra David-Neel became the most remarkable female travel writer of the Twentieth century. David-Neel studied at the Sorbonne at a time when women were not allowed to formally matriculate and converted to Buddhism after viewing a statue of the Buddha in the Guimet Museum.

In 1911 she set off, alone, to travel around India for the second time and in 1914 she secluded herself in a cave in the Himalayas for two years, intensively studying …