We’ve covered outer space explorers, Rocky Mountain explorers, and deep ocean explorers; now it’s time for an inner-space explorer. Leah is still obsessed with Tibet and talks about the First Buddhist in France, who was also the first Western woman to reach Lhasa. Learn about the wild explorer whose books and travels inspired the Beat Generation, Alexandra David Neel.
Show Notes & Extras
- Gal Pals this month are Bonnie Fillenwarth, Katie Harris, Amy Dalton, and Leah Leach
- Bonnie already talked aboutĀ Cecilia Payne, Katie already talked aboutĀ Isabella Bird, and Amy already talked about the Gals of the Bathysphere
- Get to know you question āĀ If you could travel back in time and be the first to see something, what would you go back in time to discover?
- Ab Fab! – Joanna Lumley’s Nile (commercial below)
- Indiana 100 years ago
- Pyramids
- Leah’s 1 Cool Explorer Gal is Alexandra David Neel
- Tied into Leah’s Dakini episode
- Alexandra is the first Western woman to reach Lhasa
- Book – My Journey into Lhasa (Amazon)
- Nicknames
- First Buddhist of France
- She inspired the Beat Generation years later
- 1868 Born in the suburbs of Paris
- Her parents
- Ran away twice
- Religious search
- Age 20 Freeman
- At age 21, she became a Buddhist
- Jump to age 36
- Married – kinda
- Travels
- Tibet focused in 1916
- Dalai Lama
- Chinese Revolution of 1911
- The Tibet Alexandra saw doesn’t exist anymore
- “I wanted to show them what a woman could do,” Alexandra David Neel
- Took 14 years to get to Lhasa
- First trip
- “Learn Tibetan”
- Became a Lama
- Youngden, her adopted son
- 1916 leaves for Tibet, deported
- 1924 she returns with a plan
- She does have charcoal and cocoa on her face
- Lived to be 101
- Wrote 30 books
- Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Alan Watts
- The introduction to Alexandra’s book is by the 14th Dalai Lama
- UPDATE: Nepal at the time – it’s complicated. (Wikipedia)
- Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay climbed Everest in 1953
- Tibetans at Mount Everest
Images
Video
About The Galās Guide Podcast
What if you could only share 1 cool thing about a topic? Would it be about ancient history? Would it be breaking news? Would it be safe for work? A group of gals gathers to present to you one cool thing on topics like painting, gaming, movies, music and more.
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