Preface Summary and Analysis

The preface to My Journey to Lhasa provides the background for David-Neel's historic trek into the interior of Tibet. It is her fifth expedition in remote Asia, she writes, and comes about as a result of "certain peculiar circumstances" which she sets out to relate. (p. 1)

David-Neel opens with some brief biographical information. Since her youngest childhood in Belgium she has had a stirring drive to travel and to seek out isolated places where she can be completely alone. As a young woman she studies Oriental philosophy and comparative religion and becomes a professor at a Belgian university, and in 1910 is sent by the French Ministry of Education to Asia on a research expedition.

It is on this trip that she meets the Dalai Lama, the spiritual "king" of Tibet who is at the time in exile in Bhutan owing to...