Ella Maillart


Ella Maillart was a Swiss adventurer, travel writer and photographer, as well as a sportswoman.
WWW ellamaillart.ch

Early life

Ella ‘Kini’ Maillart was the second child, born to a wealthy fur trader from Geneva. Her father was Swiss and her mother was Danish. At the age of 20 she and a friend sailed from Cannes to Corsica, then to Sardinia, Sicily and Greece. She competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics as a sailor in the Olympic monotype competition where she was the only female competitor and finished ninth out of 17. At this time she was also the captain of the Swiss Women's field hockey team and was an international skier.

Career

From the 1930s onwards she spent years exploring Muslim republics of the USSR, as well as other parts of Asia, and published a rich series of books which, just as her photographs, are today considered valuable historical testimonies. Her early books were written in French but later she began to write in English. Turkestan Solo describes a journey in 1932 in Soviet Turkestan. Photos from this journey are now displayed in the Ella Maillart wing of the Karakol Historical Museum. In 1934, the French daily Le Petit Parisien sent her to Manchuria to report on the situation under the Japanese occupation. It was there that she met Peter Fleming, a well-known writer and correspondent of The Times, with whom she would team up to cross China from Peking to Srinagar, much of the route being through hostile desert regions and steep Himalayan passes. The journey started in February 1935 and took seven months to complete, involving travel by train, on lorries, on foot, horse and camelback. Their objective was to ascertain what was happening in Xinjiang where the Kumul Rebellion had just ended. Maillart and Fleming met the Hui Muslim forces of General Ma Hushan. Ella Maillart later recorded this trek in her book Forbidden Journey, while Peter Fleming's parallel account is found in his News from Tartary. In 1937 Maillart returned to Asia for Le Petit Parisien to report on Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, while in 1939 she undertook a trip from Geneva to Kabul by car, in the company of fellow Swiss writer, Annemarie Schwarzenbach. The Cruel Way is the title of Maillart's book about this experience, cut short by the outbreak of the Second World War.
She spent the war years at Tiruvannamalai in the South of India, learning from different teachers about Advaita Vedanta, one of the schools of Hindu philosophy. On her return to Switzerland in 1945, she lived in Geneva and at Chandolin, a mountain village in the Swiss Alps. She continued to ski until late in life and last returned to Tibet in 1986. She was pioneer of color photography before the Second World War.

Legacy

Ella Maillart's manuscripts and documents are kept at the Bibliothèque de Genève, her photographic work is deposited at the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne, and her documentary films are part of the collection of the Swiss Film Archive in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Books by Ella Maillart

Turkestan Solo – One Woman's Expedition from the Tien Shan to the Kizil Kum Forbidden Journey – From Peking to Cashmir Gypsy Afloat Cruises and Caravans The Cruel Way Ti-Puss
  • ''The Land of the Sherpas''

In French

Parmi la jeunesse russe – De Moscou au Caucase Oasis interdites - De Pékin au Cachemire, une femme à travers l'Asie centrale en 1935 La vie immédiate Ella Maillart au Népal Cette réalité que j'ai pourchassée Ella Maillart sur les routes de l'Orient Chandolin d'Anniviers
  • ''Envoyée spéciale en Manchourie''

Videos and films (in French only)

Ella Maillart, écrivain. Un entretien avec Bertil Galland, 54 min., Les Films Plans fixes, Lausanne, 1984Ella Maillart chez Bernard Pivot, INA, France, 1989Entretiens avec Ella Maillart: Le Monde mon héritage, 2009.

Publications concerning Ella Maillart

News from Tartary by Peter Fleming, 1936Mount Ida by Monk Gibbon, 1948A Forgotten Journey by Peter Fleming, 1952Kini, le monde à bras le corps. Une biographie d’Ella Maillart, by Ingrid Thobois et Géraldine Alibeu, 2019

Honours