Ella Maillart was a French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

-speaking Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 adventurer, travel writer and photographer, as well as a sportswoman.

Life

Ella Maillart had been captain of the Swiss Women's land hockey team and was an international skier. She also competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics

1924 Summer Olympics

The 1924 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the VIII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1924 in Paris, France...

 as sailor

Yacht racing

Yacht racing is the sport of competitive yachting.While sailing groups organize the most active and popular competitive yachting, other boating events are also held world-wide: speed motorboat racing; competitive canoeing, kayaking, and rowing; model yachting; and navigational contests Yacht racing...

 in the Olympic monotype competition

Sailing at the 1924 Summer Olympics

Sailing/Yachting is a Olympic sport starting from the Games of the 1st Olympiad . With the exception of 1904 and possible 1916 sailing was always a part of the Olympic program....

.

From the 1930s onwards she spent years exploring oriental republics of the USSR, as well as other parts of Asia, and published a rich series of books which, just as her photographs, are today considered valuable historical testimonies. Her early books were written in French but later she began to write in English. Turkestan Solo describes a journey in 1932 in Soviet Turkestan

Soviet Central Asia

Soviet Central Asia refers to the section of Central Asia formerly controlled by the Soviet Union, as well as the time period of Soviet administration . In terms of area, it is nearly synonymous with Russian Turkestan, the name for the region during the Russian Empire...

. In 1934, the French daily Le Petit Parisien sent her to Manchuria to report on the situation under the Japanese occupation. It was there that she met Peter Fleming, a well-known writer and correspondent of The Times, with whom she would team up to cross China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 from Peking to Srinagar

Srinagar

Srinagar is the summer seasonal capital of Jammu and Kashmir. It is situated in Kashmir Valley and lies on the banks of the Jhelum River, a tributary of the Indus. It is one of the largest cities in India not to have a Hindu majority. The city is famous for its gardens, lakes and houseboats...

 (3,500 miles), much of the route being through hostile desert regions and steep Himalayan passes. The journey started in February 1935 and took seven months to complete, involving travel by train, on lorries, on foot, horse and camelback. Their objective was to ascertain what was happening in Sinkiang (then also known as Chinese Turkestan) where a civil war had been going on. Ella Maillart later recorded this trek in her book Forbidden Journey, while Peter Fleming's parallel account is found in his News from Tartary

News from Tartary

News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir is a travel book by Peter Fleming describing his journey through time and the political situation of Turkestan....

. In 1937 Ella Maillart returned to Asia for Le Petit Parisien to report on Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, while in 1939 she undertook a trip from Geneva to Kabul by car, in the company of the Swiss writer, Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Annemarie Schwarzenbach was a Swiss writer, journalist, photographer and traveler.- Life :Annemarie was born in Bocken, near Zurich, Switzerland...

. The Cruel Way is the title of Ella Maillart's book about this experience, cut short by the outbreak of the second World War.

She spent the war years in the South of India, learning from different teachers about Advaita Vedanta, one of the schools of Hindu philosophy. On her return to Switzerland in 1945, she lived in Geneva and at Chandolin, a mountain village in the Swiss Alps. She continued to ski until late in life and last returned to Tibet in 1986.

Ella Maillart's manuscripts and documents are kept at the Bibliothèque de Genève (Library of the City of Geneva), her photographic work is deposited at the Musée de l'Elysée

Musée de l'Elysée

Musée de l'Élysée is a museum on Lausanne, Switzerland, entirely devoted to photography. It is a government supported institution founded in 1985 by Charles-Henri Favrod in an 18th century mansion. The collection of more than 100,000 photographs includes those of colour pioneer Gabriel Lippmann...

 in Lausanne, and her documentary films (on Afghanistan, Nepal and South India) are part of the collection of La Cinémathèque suisse in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Books by Ella Maillart

• Turkestan Solo - One Woman's Expedition from the Tien Shan to the Kizil Kum (her journey from Moscow to Kirghizstan and Uzbekistan in 1932)
• Forbidden Journey - From Peking to Cashmir (her trek across Asia with Peter Fleming in 1935)
• Gypsy Afloat (an account of her years at sea)
• Cruises and Caravans (autobiographical narrative)
• The Cruel Way (from Geneva to Kabul with Annemarie Schwarzenbach)
• Ti-Puss (the story of her years in India with a tiger cat as her companion)
• The Land of the Sherpas (photographs and texts on her first encounter with Nepal in 1951)

In French

• Parmi la jeunesse russe - De Moscou au Caucase (about her stay in Moscow and crossing the Caucasus in 1931)
• La vie immédiate (Ella Maillart's photographs and texts by Nicolas Bouvier)
• Ella Maillart au Népal (photographs taken in 1951 and 1965 during a trek to the base camp of Mount Everest)
• Cette réalité que j'ai pourchassée (letters to her parents, 1925 - 1941)
• Ella Maillart sur les routes de l'Orient (the most evocative photographs she took during her travels)
• Chandolin d'Anniviers (photographs and texts about her mountain village)
• Envoyée spéciale en Manchourie (a series of articles written in 1934 for the French daily Le Petit Parisien)

Videos and films (in French only)

• Ella Maillart, écrivain. Un entretien avec Bertil Galland, 54 min., Les Films Plans fixes, Lausanne, 1984
• Ella Maillart chez Bernard Pivot (émission La vie est un long fleuve tranquille), INA, France, 1989
• Entretiens avec Ella Maillart: Le Monde mon héritage (radio interviews and the film Les itinéraires d'Ella Maillart, a 1973 Swiss TV production), 2009.

Publications concerning Ella Maillart

• News from Tartary by Peter Fleming, 1936
• Mount Ida by Monk Gibbon, 1948
• A Forgotten Journey by Peter Fleming, 1952

Honours

• Prix Schiller, Switzerland (1953)
• Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, London (1955)
• Prix quadriennal de la Ville de Genève (1987)
• Prix littéraire Alexandra David-Neel (1989)
• Grand Prix du Livre maritime, Festival de Concarneau (1991)
• Prix et Médaille Léon Dewez de la Société de Géographie de Paris (1994)

External links

• Official bibliography
• Works by Ella K. Maillart at Internet Archive
  Internet Archive
  The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
  
  (scanned books original editions illustrated color)