Alexandra David-Neel, in the tradition of Great White Explorers, journeys to Lhasa, Tibet, forbidden to all Western Women. This, in 1923, largely on foot, with her faithful companion and adopted son Tibetan Llama Yongden.
Now, a fine adventure, and the situations and people she encounters are so rustic it's hard to believe this took place a mere 100 years ago. There are the monks, medieval intrigues, robbers, fine accounts of the superstitions, customs, politics, there are the amusing 'vignettes' or portraits of domestic Tibetan life, bliss, or otherwise, stories told in the character of Chaucer.
There is, something I've noticed in these older lady explorer types, a certain style of narrative that they adhere to, it's as if they were telling you the stories themselves. In the first person, a very natural tone that other male authors try to distance themselves from.
Anyways that said she's as prone to telling her own romantic brand of Travelers tales as anyone, and while she professes Western Skepticism she as well buys into the Llama /Superstitious aspects of Buddhism as much as the next person- just not as much as your indoctrinated Tibetan. The occasional fantastic happening can't possibly hurt readership, can it?
And, there is something else that slightly annoyed me about it. This voyage, by necessity a deception (she impersonates a Tibetan Beggar Lady, the Holy City of Lhasa is off-limits to Western Women), yet she harps continually upon her cleverness, the near exposures, and somewhat paints the people who good-naturedly accept the deception as rubes. Perhaps they are, but - dependent as she is upon their hospitality, it would be kinder if she never mentioned it.
A fine read but not a great book, merely another view into a culture and way of life that's largely vanished.
You can read it online here: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.40184, although it's not too hard to find in paperback - reprinted in 1986, maybe even again since.