My Journey to Lhasa: the personal story of the only white woman who succeeded in entering the forbidden city (1927)

Madame David-Neel's travels in remote parts of Asia, including her fifth expedition, a journey to Tibet, of which she gives a short account in the present book, were undertaken as the result of certain peculiar circumstances. The idea of visiting Lhasa became implanted in her mind. Before the frontier post to which she had been escorted, she took an oath that in spite of all obstacles, she would reach Lhasa and show what the will of a woman could achieve.

An exemplary travelogue of danger and achievement by the Frenchwoman Madame Alexandra David–Neel of her 1923 expedition to Tibet, the fifth in her series of Asian travels, and her personal recounting of her journey to Lhasa, Tibet's forbidden city. In order to penetrate Tibet and reach Lhasa, she used her fluency of Tibetan dialects and culture, disguised herself as a beggar with yak hair extensions and inked skin and tackled some of the roughest terrain and climate in the World. With the help of her young companion, Yongden, she willingly suffered the primitive travel conditions, frequent outbreaks of disease, the ever–present danger of border control and the military to reach her goal. The determination and sheer physical fortitude it took for this woman, delicately reared in Paris and Brussels, is inspiration for men and women alike.

David–Neel is famous for being the first Western woman to have been received by any Dalai Lama and as a passionate scholar and explorer of Asia, hers is one of the most remarkable of all travellers' tales.