Meet My Heroines: Freya, Isabella and Alexandra

Not all who wander, as J.R.R. Tolkien once put it, are lost. And he, of all writers, might know. His characters were always on the move.

While men have long been the wanderers of human history, starting with the time, no doubt, when they were chasing a mastadon and kept on going, women have been, at least recently, quickly catching up.

Three of the many, many intrepid women who ran away from home and wrote about it in the 19th and 20th centuries come to mind: Freya Stark, a British explorer and the first Western woman to visit Arabia alone; Isabella Bird, who would fall physically ill when she wasn't on the road; and Alexandra David-Néel, a Frenchwoman who snuck into  Lhasa when foreigners, especially women, were strictly forbidden. 

These women and many others have inspired boatloads and now planeloads of subsequent generations, this writer included, to give it all up and pack our bags. Lightly, of course.

Freya Stark

Born in 1893 and often sickly, Freya turned to books for solace and pleasure. After reading One Thousand and One Nights when she was but nine, she fell in love with the Orient. But it wasn't until her mid-30s, after having studied Turkish and Arabic, that she took off for Beirut and Baghdad, shocking her compatriots who were likely sipping lukewarm tea and nibbling cucumber sandwiches when they heard the news.

Freya, however, was just getting warmed up.

She was soon on her way through the dangerous Iranian wilderness in search of The Valleys of the Assassins, without, of course, the benefit of Keen hiking boots, Leki trekking poles and GPS. She went on donkey, camel, foot and in the occasional automobile amid fearsome peoples guarding village and land. Eventually, she found the valleys and became the first explorer -- male or female -- to chart and write about some parts of them.

Petite, somewhat fragile, complex and multifaceted, Freya became one of the top adventure writers of the last century. I marvel at her mix of fearlessness and naivete -- she called one group of especially murderous tribesmen "as cheerful a lot of villains as you can wish to meet." Apparently, they also found her charming and, apart from stealing her belongings, which was an everyday part of their culture, treated her with respect and not a little bit of awe.

Freya was married in her mid-50s but separated from her husband five years later. They never divorced.

"One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one's own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism." -- Freya Stark

Freya died in 1993 at the ripe and well-worn age of 100. She had written more than 30 travel books, autobiographies and volumes of her letters. 

Freya Stark Obituary in The New York Times

Isabella Bird

Isabella Bird, born in 1831, was also quite ill as a child and adult. But, funnily enough, her symptoms disappeared whenever she went away; that is, when she did what she wanted to do. And what she wanted more than anything was to leave home and see the world.

She started with a trip to America at the age of 23 -- her father gave her 100 British pounds and told her she could stay until it was spent. The result of that excursion was her first book, The Englishwoman in America, published shortly after her return home.

Isabella went on to travel across North America, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, including Japan. After marrying in middle age, and feeling sick for much of those six years, she was widowed, an event that prompted her to study medicine and return to her beloved travels. 

At 60, and with modest means, she embarked for India, Tibet, Persia, Turkey, Kurdistan, Korea and Morocco and more -- among her many accomplishments, she would be the first Western woman to travel up the Yangtze River.

"I am doing what a woman can hardly ever do -- leading a life fit for a man." 

-- Isabella Bird 

Isabella also became the first woman inducted into the Royal Geographical Society and she published numerous works on her wanderings. She was planning another trip to China when she died in Scotland at the age of 72.

Isabella Bird's Obituary from the Journal of the African Society

Alexandra David-Néel

Born in Paris in 1868, Alexandra David-Néel had a strong sense of her destiny early on. By the time she turned 18, she had already traveled through Europe on her own and four years later she took off for India, where she stayed until her money ran out. 

Shortly thereafter, she met Philippe Néel in Tunis and married him. The newlyweds, however, were not destined to live together long. 

Fascinated by Buddhism, Alexandra soon returned to India and lived for a few years in a cave. She was the first Western woman to meet the Dalai Lama, and befriended a young Sikkimese monk, Aphur Yongden, who would become her lifelong travel companion.

By this time, Alexandra was in her 40s and hardly slowing down. While World War I raged in Europe, she and Yongden hunkered down in Japan. That's where she developed the idea to sneak into Lhasa as a beggar. 

At the age of 56, already fluent in Tibetan dialects and culture, her hair made long with yak hair extensions and her skin darkened with ink, she trekked with Yongden through some of the roughest terrain and climates in the world to reach that holy land. The first Western woman to enter Lhasa, she would stay for what must have been two remarkable months.

Though by then legally separated from Philippe, she kept up a faithful correspondence with him until his death in 1941. After returning to France for about nine years to write -- and perhaps catch her breath -- she headed back to Tibet with Yongden, traveling this time through the Soviet Union, and stayed there for another 11 years.

By the time she made it back to France after World War II, she was in her late 70s. She continued to study and write there until her death at the marvelous age of 100. Her ashes were combined with those of Yongden, who had died years earlier, and scattered at Varanasi, in India.

Alexandra David-Neel wrote at least 32 books in both French and English. Her spiritual works influenced Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, Alan Watts and many others.

And so, these amazing women wandered far and wide but one could hardly say they were lost. They gave up the comforts of middle-class life to challenge themselves against elements and the odds. Two of them would survive an entire century.  Perhaps hardy travel is a secret to longevity?

My own peregrinations pale by comparison and now, of course, Lhasa is a popular tourist destination. Travel has become little harder than scraping together money for a plane ticket and figuring out what not to bring. 

So the next time I'm being frisked at the airport, I'll remember these brave risk-takers and all they had to go through to get where they were going. And I'll smile at the uniformed security officer as she pats me down with her sanitary gloves and sends me on my way.