On foot to Lhasa

Alexandra David-Néel · 1923 CE – 1924 CE · Earth

On foot to Lhasa — Alexandra David-Néel · 1923 CE – 1924 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Cross eastern Tibet on foot as beggar pilgrims and reach Lhasa, closed to foreigners, in answer to the ban she called absurd, and show, in her words, what the will of a woman could achieve.

Historical context

After the British expedition of 1904, David-Néel wrote, no foreigner apart from political officers and their doctors had been allowed to go to Lhasa. The Tibetan government received no one who was not sent to it, and the Government of India refused permits, in accordance, its trade agent David Macdonald wrote, with the wishes of the Tibetan government. She had lived among Tibetans for a dozen years: as a hermit in Sikkim, as a guest of the Panchen Lama at Shigatse, and as a translator at the Kumbum monastery for more than two years. The British had expelled her from Sikkim in 1916, and Lhasa’s officials had turned her back in Kham. In the autumn of 1923 she set out from Yunnan with Aphur Yongden, as an old beggar pilgrim and her lama son, to reach Lhasa for the New Year by passes that, she believed, no foreigner had crossed.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Setting out from Yunnan

    October 1923

    In October 1923 two walkers leave a mission house in Yunnan with two porters, telling everyone they are going to collect plants in the hills.

  2. Over the frontier pass

    1923 CE

    They slip past Londre by night, climb the pilgrim road round Kha Karpo and cross the Dokar pass into Lhasa’s territory at nightfall.

  3. The Salween gorges

    November 1923

    They follow the Salween and the Nu valley north through village country, begging, blessing and telling fortunes, and cross the upper Salween on a cable.

  4. Through Po-yul

    1924 CE

    Over two snowbound passes in December and into the Po country, where they fast for six days, meet conspirators and robbers, and beg at the king’s gate on New Year’s day.

  5. Down to the Tsangpo

    January 1924

    Past robbers, a toll post and a hermit who knows her, they come down to the Brahmaputra and turn up the Giamda river towards Lhasa.

  6. Into Lhasa at Monlam

    February 1924

    After four months on foot they cross the Kyi river under a storm of dust and find a beggars’ lodging within sight of the Potala.

  7. Two months in Lhasa

    1924 CE

    She climbs the Potala behind two villagers, is taken for a woman of Ladakh, and lives two months among the beggars of Lhasa.

  8. Revealed at Gyantse

    1924 CE

    After a tour of Samye and the Yarlung valley, she walks into the British post at Gyantse and says who she is.

Outcome

After four months on foot from Yunnan, by the Salween, Po-yul and the Brahmaputra, she walked into Lhasa with Aphur Yongden for the New Year of 1924 and stayed two months, by her account unrecognised. She then toured Samye and the Yarlung valley, revealed herself to the British at Gyantse and went down to India through Sikkim.

Alexandra David-Néel

French orientalist, opera singer and Buddhist who walked into Lhasa in 1924 disguised as a beggar pilgrim, with the Sikkimese lama Aphur Yongden as her son; she wrote that no foreign woman had seen the city before her.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

Continue exploring