Though she often traveled alone, she thought it best to have a companion on this trip in case she landed in prison for traveling in forbidden territory. On her 7-month, 3500-mile trek from Beijing to Kashmir through Chinese Turkestan, she left with only two pounds of marmalade, a rifle a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, writing paper, a Leica camera and Peter Fleming. Maillart’s travel credo was, “Nobody can go? Than I shall go,” and she lived up to every word of it. Her travels in the 1930s led to two other books Turkestan Solo and Among Russian Youth: From Moscow to the Caucaus. In the 1930s, Maillart also had a brief film career in Berlin traveled to Moscow walked across the Caucasus Mountains and attempted to put together a Russian female field hockey team. In 1935 she authored Forbidden Journey, an account of her trek into the closed city of Sinkiang in Chinese Turkestan. Maillart founded Switzerland’s first women’s field hockey club and was a member of the Swiss sailing team in the 1924 Olympics. Ella Maillart died at her mountain chalet in Chandolin, Switzerland on March 27th at the age of 94.
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