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Leaping Lamas!

Alexandra David-Neel (1868—1969), the first European to penetrate the Tibetan plateau and investigate its mysterious religion, records her encounter with a lung-gom-pa, a monk capable of traveling great distances on foot at a supernormal speed.

Alexandra David-Neel

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I met the first lung-gom-pa in northern Tibet. Towards the end of the afternoon, my son Yongden, our servants and I were riding leisurely across a wide tableland, when I noticed, far away in front of us, a moving black spot which my field-glasses showed to be a man. I felt astonished. Meetings are not frequent in that region; for the last ten days we had not seen a human being. Moreover, men on foot and alone do not, as a rule, wander in these immense solitudes. Who could the strange traveler be?

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