Tough Girl Podcast

Elise in her own words:   “To me, Alexandra David-Néel’s book My Journey to Lhasa was one of those books I just couldn’t get over. You know when you read a book or see a film and you keep thinking about it for weeks afterwards, it was like that. Except that with this book, I never stopped thinking about it. The book recounts the final six months of Alexandra's epic 14 year journey through Asia, her quest to reach the forbidden city of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Against all odds, dressed as a poor pilgrim, she reached Lhasa in 1924.   12 years after reading this book for the first time, I was still wondering just how she managed to achieve what she did. 14 years of dealing with the cold, the wet, illness and of course the constant pressure and difficulty that came with being a female traveller in the early 1900s.   So, I decided to act on that idea that had always been in the back of my mind - to recreate Alexandra’s journey in some way, and to experience life travelling as a woman as closely as she would h