A trip down memory lane

In a few days there's the anniversary of a very dear friend of mine. Knowing her tastes in reading - or rather her open-mindness -, I decided to offer her some books, one of them being Mystiques et magiciens du Tibet (Magic and Mystery in Tibet) by Alexandra David-Néel.
This is one of my all-time favourites.
After reading Milarepa's life story, this book was the next in line to fuel my passion for Tibet. I remember getting my copy back in Bucarest in the beginning of my highschoold years from an antiquarian (nowdays, adolescents in highschool read entrepreneurial books and become millionnaires... ). I used to roam all the strees in the center of the city - which were at the time filled with these people selling old volumes, less nowdays - in search for books on India, yoga and the like.
It was quite a surprise to me to find this type of reading translated into Romanian. It didn't look like much, a poor quality print with unproper biding. I bought it nonetheless.
I must have started reading it immediately. I was about 50 pages through, and I remember Karla (i.e. best friend) came to Bucarest and we got to spend all the evening talking and playing lab rats for mom (some poetry experiment relatetd to Bachelard - or was it some other time?) and then we read halfway through the night. Karla chose a novel by Camil Petrescu, a Romanian writer, called Patul lui Procust (Procust's Bed), and I went on with my mystics and magicians.
It was quite hillarious exchanging atmospheres: one the one hand you had this ritch, intellectual sort of individual lying in the bed of a prostitute whom he despised, in a room that the hated, a bed that he found disgusting because of the smell, the sweat and the texture, and who had to put up with conversations that he couldn't stand, then meeting THE woman, left her, plane crash, dead; and on the other hand there were those huge, cold, windy, empty plateaus, the yak caravans, the lamas, the weird rituals, the endless walking, the psychic powers, the weird people, the monasteries, strange deeds.
Literally and literary, two worlds appart.

At the time I had no real idea what Tibet looked like, I had seen no documentaries, no photos, no nothing. And so, my imagination had to make it up and it really felt like a very very mysterious and dangerous place, filled with adventures and lots of treasures (I don't mean material ones). Now the feeling I get while reading the book is obviously no longer the same, but many times I still get this late-cold-winter-night-with-torch-under-the-blanket feeling. And it's lovely. It really does open up a world of possiblities.

Another Alexandra book online: Tibetan Journey