The two of them, in the company of a very eccentric Lama, crossed all of China from East to West facing great difficulties. They visited the Gobi desert and Mongolia. Then, after three years studying at the monastery of Kum-Bum, they abandoned their mules, yaks, servants and "luggage". Alexandra dressed in a beggar woman's robe and Yongden donned his monk's habit. This time, taking mostly unexplored trails, they successfully crossed the border into mysterious Tibet.

After a very eventful trip - probably the harshest of their many peregrinations - they reached Lhasa exhausted.

For two months, they visited the holy city and the great monasteries nearby: Drepung, Sera, Ganden, Samye...

Alexandra was always the unassuming old mother reciting the mantra "om mani padme hum", leaving to Yongden the task ofbargaining and negotiating all material matters. The scenario was perfectly worked out !

While in Lhasa, however, Alexandra unwisely went every morning to the river for a quick wash in this winter period. Such foolish behaviour could have cost them dear. One of her neighbours was so intrigued, she mentioned it to the Tsarong Shape (the governor of Lhasa). With more important matters on his mind, he did not send one of his men to investigate until later, when he heard the rumour that Alexandra and Yongden had just reached Gyantse. The governor immediately concluded that the lady who washed every morning must have been Alexandra.

It was only a few months afterward that Alexandra and Yongden learned of this, in a letter from Mr Ludlow and David MacDonald, the British commercial agent who stopped their advance in Gyantse. The latter, with his son-in-law Captain Perry, took the measures for providing them with the necessary papers to be able to return to India via Sikkim.

After so many unforgettable years, after having worn so long the dawn-coloured robe (the colour of detachment) in India and the garnet-coloured robe in Tibet, contemplated the world's highest peaks and the immense solitary stretches of Central Asia, how could she return to France to readapt to a life that she had deliberately fled fourteen years earlier ?

Alexandra separated from Philippe and, travelling through Provence, she settled in Digne in 1928 to build "Samten-Dzong", her fortress of meditation. Although the "Bléone" river is not the Brahmapoutre and "Pic du Couar" is not Mount Everest, the sky is blue, the sun shines there. Alexandra was charmed by the beauty of the Prealps - Lilliputian Himalayas, as she liked to tell reporters. After having covered much of the planet, crossed paradisiacal regions, breathed the violent fragrance of forests of orchids in bloom, she never regretted an instant her decision to settle in this town, with its wafts of lavender. Here, she published several books relating her travels and successfully commented the theories of the mystics and magicians she had approached.