Lieutenant Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, KCSI KCIE (31 May 1863 – 31 July 1942) was a British Army officer, explorer and spiritual writer.

[2][3] Having read General MacGregor's book Defence of India he could have justifiably[neutrality is disputed] called himself an expert on the "Great Game" of espionage that was unfolding on the Steppes of Asia.

After sailing to China his party set out, with Colonel Mark Bell's permission, to cross 1200 miles of desert with the ostensible authority to survey the geography; but in reality, the purposes were to ascertain the strength of the Russian physical threats to the Raj.

Departing Peking with a senior colleague, Henry E. M. James (on leave from his Indian Civil Service position) and a young British consular officer from Newchwang, Harry English Fulford, on 4 April 1887, Lieut Younghusband explored Manchuria, visiting the frontier areas of Chinese settlement in the region of the Changbai Mountains.

[6][7] On arrival in India, he was granted three months' leave by the Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Lord Roberts; the scientific results of this travel would prove vital information to the Royal Geographical Society.

Parting with his British companions, he crossed the Taklamakan Desert to Chinese Turkestan, and pioneered a route from Kashgar to India through the uncharted Mustagh Pass.

In February 1889, he was made captain[10] and was dispatched with a small escort of Gurkha soldiers to investigate an uncharted region north of Ladakh, where raiders from Hunza had disrupted trade between Yarkand and India the previous year.

[11] Whilst encamped in the valley of the Yarkand River, Younghusband received a messenger at his camp, inviting him to dinner with Captain Bronislav Grombchevsky, his Russian counterpart in "The Great Game".

Younghusband accepted the invitation to Grombchevsky's camp, and after dinner the two rivals talked into the night, sharing brandy and vodka, and discussing the possibility of a Russian invasion of British India.

Younghusband received a telegram from Simla, to attend the Intelligence Department (ID) to be interviewed by Foreign Secretary Sir Mortimer Durand, transferred to the Indian Political Service.

He refused a request to visit Lhasa as an interpreter, disguised as a Yarkandi trader, a cover not guaranteed to fool the Russians, after Andrew Dalgleish, a Scots merchant, had been hacked to death.

Departure from Leh on 8 August 1889 on the caravan route took them up the mountain pass of Shimshal towards Hunza, his aim being to restore the tea trade to Xinjiang and prevent any further raids into Kashmir.

[13] Younghusband sought to investigate the Pamir Gap, a possible Russian entry route to India, but first needed to address issues with the Chinese authorities in Kashgar.

Younghusband participated in the geopolitical rivalry between Britain and Russia, known as 'The Great Game,' which persisted into the 20th century before being formally concluded by the 1907 Anglo-Russian Treaty.

Younghusband, among other explorers such as Sven Hedin, Nikolay Przhevalsky, Shoqan Walikhanov and Sir Marc Aurel Stein, had participated in earnest.

[17] Roughly 100 miles (160 km) inside Tibet, on the way to Gyantse, thence to the capital of Lhasa, a confrontation outside the hamlet of Guru led to a victory by the expedition's troops over 600–700 Tibetan soldiers.

[18] The expedition's troops, equipped with rifles and machine guns, overpowered the less-equipped Tibetan forces, who were armed with hoes, swords, and flintlocks.

However, the invasion of Tibet embarrassed the British government, which desired good relations with the Qing dynasty for the sake of Britain's trade with Chinese coastal settlements.

Accordingly, the British government repudiated the Treaty of Lhasa, signed by Younghusband and Tibetan leaders, due to concerns over its impact on relations with the Qing dynasty and trade with Chinese coastal regions.

[24] Younghusband supported efforts to summit Mount Everest and endorsed George Mallory's participation in early expeditions, and they followed the same initial route as the earlier Tibet Mission.

[27] Biographer Patrick French described Younghusband's religious belief as one who was brought up an Evangelical Christian, read his way into Tolstoyan simplicity, experienced a revelatory vision in the mountains of Tibet, toyed with telepathy in Kashmir, proposed a new faith based on virile racial theory, then transformed it into what Bertrand Russell called 'a religion of atheism.

'[29] Ultimately he became a spiritualist and "premature hippie" who "had great faith in the power of cosmic rays, and claimed that there are extraterrestrials with translucent flesh on the planet Altair.

"[30] Younghusband described having a mystical experience during his retreat from Tibet, which he said instilled him with a profound sense of 'love for the whole world and convinced him that "men at heart are divine".

[34] Younghusband allegedly believed in free love ("freedom to unite when and how a man and a woman please"), marriage laws examined as a matter of "outdated custom".

The Ingrid Bergman film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) is based on Gladys Aylward's life, with Ronald Squire portraying Younghusband.