André Migot

He served as an army medical officer in World War I, winning the Croix de Guerre.

After the war he engaged in research in marine biology, and then practised as a doctor in France; in his spare time, he climbed in the Alps and Pyrenees.

After the war he went to Indochina, whence in 1947 he made a journey alone through Eastern Tibet and China in order to research aspects of Tibetan Buddhism.

As he could speak and write Tibetan, he was able to converse with the lamas, and was initiated into the Karma Kagyu lineage at Shangu Gompa, a lamasery outside modern-day Yushu.

[1] This journey is described in his best-known book Caravane vers Bouddha, translated into English by Peter Fleming as Tibetan Marches.