5 Women Explorers Who Made the World Theirs
In honor of Women’s History Month, we compiled a list of five women explorers who made travel and exploration their business, regardless of resources, social taboos, or experience. This is for the ladies, and for anyone who ever made an excuse not to travel–it can always be done.
It’s amazing that even though these are five women explorers from vastly different backgrounds, they all overcame basically the same sexist challenges. That, my friend, is why Women’s History Month matters–you don’t see the history, you don’t see the pattern. Nearly every person on this list endured the constraints of motherhood and marriage to pursue what they loved. All of them attained their experiences and expertise against the antagonism of male peers. But nonetheless, they found themselves backpacking in fabulous lands. They witnessed panoramas of nature and culture that the world would’ve rather barred from their sex entirely.
Gertrude Bell
T.E. Lawrence gets all the credit as the great ambassador and ethnographer of the Middle East during World War I. However, a review of Gertrude Bell’s exploits could change your mind in a hurry. Like most would-be women explorers who wanted a higher education, Bell fought tooth and nail to pursue her intellectual interests. While studying history at Oxford, her tutor was so distressed by her presence that he forced her to sit facing the back of the room during class. Of course, Bell went on to master six languages, scale some of the tallest peaks in Europe, and drew the borders of modern-day Iraq. Let me explain.
Bell began her archaeological exploits in a tour spanning Syria, Damascus, Jerusalem, and other sites. Her writings on these locales opened up the Western world to their geographical beauty and rich history. Aside from her intellectual pursuits, she is perhaps the most athletically accomplished of this list’s women explorers. Her mountaineering accomplishments included La Meije, and Mont Blanc, the avalanche-prone jewel of the French Alps. She did concede to the great Finsterraarhorn in Switzerland, but not without a fight: it took two days of clinging to a cliff face, in the middle of a thunderstorm, to chase her down. Bell’s best known for her work as liaison and consultant during World War I. Her expertise in the area’s terrain and endemic cultures proved indispensible during the Arab Revolt, as well as the Sinai and Palestine Campaign. According to historians, she was “one of the few representatives of His Majesty’s Government remembered by the Arabs with anything resembling affection.” She was passionate regarding Arab independence and culture, and well-known for her expertise. After the war, she was asked by Winston Churchill to draw up the borders of the region we know today as Iraq. Yes, Bell quite literally shaped the modern world we know today.
Nellie Bly
Nelly Bly’s career began with a newspaper op-ed written by famed English surgeon Erasmus Wilson. His piece stated the usual misogynist smut: that women belong in the home, etc. etc., and that a working women (much women explorers) are nothing short of a “monstrosity.” Bly did not take his insults sitting down, and devoted the rest of her life towards progressive journalism. And along the way, she accomplished the simple feat of rounding the world in (less than) 80 days.
Bly made a name for herself as a fearless writer who bent all her powers towards dispelling the myths surrounding her sex in the early 20th century. She went so far as to disguise herself as a madwoman to gain entrance into Blackwell’s Island mental institution. The resulting exposé raised outcry against the deplorable treatment of not only female patients, but the mentally infirm nation-wide. She took a break from journalism to take on a side project: to best the fictional record set forth in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days, which she soundly did. By ship, on the backs of burros, by rickshaw, she completed her journey with her progressive values close by her side. She dared anyone to bar passage to women explorers on the basis of gender, and expressed disgust at the Port of Said, where travelers going landside regularly carried parasols and sticks with which to beat back crowds of beggars. It’s one thing to travel the world carrying luggage, and another entirely to carry a sense of right in a morally askew world.
Ynes Mexia
Hitting your ‘midlife crisis’ at the age of 30 is all the rage today; hence, Ynes Mexia should be a lesson to all such aging millenials. At the age of 50, Mexia had undergone two divorces and a ruined business (by the fault of her second husband). Rather than folding to life’s disappointments, she pursued an education in sociology, then botany, and went on to collect hundreds of thousands of plant samples, 50 of them new and named after her.
The elderly Mexia initially pursued a sociology degree in San Francisco, but, perhaps recognizing by now that life was short, she abandoned her degree midway to pursue botany. She joined the environmentalist Sierra Club, and undertook a journey into Mexico. On this single trip, she collected 33,000 samples, and likely would’ve kept going, had a fall from a cliff not halted her trip. After recuperating, she took several more expeditions into Argentina, Chile, Mt. McKinley, and the Amazon, accompanied by a minimal staff of guides. She was able to fund all of these trips by selling specimens to private collectors and museums, making her passions work for her, and then some.
Ida Pfeiffer
The cliche is that travel is supposed to broaden your horizons, and no story dramatizes that adage like Ida Pfeiffer’s. After a small inheritance freed her from the burdens of marriage and motherhood, the 45-year old Pfeiffer decided to travel the world alone. She’s yet another of those women explorers for whom age was just another obstacle to smash. Knowing well that she’d likely perish in her solo travels, she drew up her will and departed. The resulting journey into hostile and strange territories would soften her decidedly Western-centric worldviews considerably.
On a shoestring budget, she made her way from the Danube Riber to the Black Sea, into the Middle East and Egypt. Everywhere she turned, she found the local cultures ‘uncivilized’ and ‘unkempt,’ an opinion which would soon shift unexpectedly. After returning home, she sold her memoirs and used the proceeds to fund more travels, of course. The next phase of her journeys cut into Rio de Janeiro and the South American rainforests, then into Indochina. Throughout her career, Pfeiffer relied mostly on the kindness of locals for which she apparently had no love or respect. On Christian soil in Russia, however, Pfeiffer was detained and accused of being a spy. Understandably, she began to suspect that western ‘civilization’ didn’t necessarily entail civility. Among the women explorers I found, Pfeiffer holds the distinction of being one of the most outwardly xenophobic, making her change of heart all the more remarkable. During her travels, the only group to garner her admiration were, of all things, a headhunting tribe from Borneo called the Dyaks, whom she found good-natured and soft-mannered. Her evolving attitude is maybe best summarized in her own words: “I shuddered, but I could not help asking myself whether, after all, we Europeans are not really just as bad or worse than these despised savages?”
Alexandra David-Neel
Behind every great man lies a woman, right? In Alexandra David-Neel’s case, these men included diverse personalities from Jack Kerouac and Alan Watts, to Sidkeong Tulku Namgyal, crown prince of the Chogyal Kingdom of India. All of them respected David-Neel’s profound intellect and dedication to her own passions.
Perhaps the most multifaceted of our women explorers, David-Neel was a traveler, an accomplished Tibetan buddhist, an opera singer, and 30th degree Freemason. From an early age she took an interest in radical ideas, and befriended anarchists and feminists alike. Her passion for Eastern philosophy led her to abandon marriage to study at the feet of masters, in the shrines of her chosen beliefs. On her travels into India, her charm and intellect made a friend of Sidkeong Tulku Namgyal, eldest son of the current Maharaja of the Chogyal Kingdom. He would later call upon her to aid in the reformation of Buddhism in his own lands. She counted among her tutors the 13th Dalai Lama in exile, and the renowned monastery leader Lachen Gomchen Rinpoche. David-Neel pursued even the most esoteric aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, undertaking isolation and fasting, and studying with cave-dwelling shamans without hesitation. She pursued her passions even into the forbidden city of Lhasa, disguised as a beggar monk. Like all the women explorers on our list, she never met a barrier she couldn’t dismantle by effort and willppower.
