Alexandra David-Néel, Explorer and Adventurer

“To the one who knows how to look and feel, every moment of this free wandering life is an enchantment.”

So go the words of Alexandra David-Néel, who led one of the most best possible lives (IMHO) in human history. She lived to be 100, and her life was so full that this one post cannot do it justice. But just read an abbreviated litany of her adventures and you are likely to be as enchanted with her as I:

Alexandra was born in France in 1868, a half century before women in the U.S. had the right to vote. Straight off, she demonstrated her free spirits by first running away from home at age 5, but her parents caught her. She tried again when she was 15 to get to England but ran out of money. By 18 she got the family funds to travel on her own to European countries like Spain, Sweden, and England, and became involved with groups and causes like the Theosophical Society, feminism, anarchy, and eventually Eastern philosophy. The latter held her attention most famously, because she became a leading teacher and author of numerous books on Tibetian spirituality, Buddhism, meditation, and travels in South-east Asia, China, Tibet, and Japan. Later thinkers like Alan Watts and Ram Das were inspired by her writings.

And there is so much more to David-Néels’ life. From 1895-1904 she became a very successful opera singer, giving financial assistance to her parents. She also got married for a short time to a man with whom she had great affection for the rest of her life, but she left him after a few years because she wanted to travel. She also elected not to have biological children, but she eventually adopted a young 15 boy from India who traveled with her. She met the Buddhist spiritual leaders of northern India’s Sikkim state, and was the first Western woman to meet the Dalai Lama of Tibet. She spent about two years in a cave learning Tibetian Buddhism and practicing austerities. Eventually she managed to cross the border of India into Tibet (she disguised herself to take this illegal journey) and wrote a book about the famed sacred city of Lhasa.

When she was 69, Alexandra had decades of adventure left, but there is not enough space here to record them.