Gabriel Bonvalot

Pierre Gabriel Édouard Bonvalot (13 July 1853 – 10 December 1933) was a French explorer of Central Asia and Tibet. Bonvalot was born in the commune of Épagne in the Aube department in north-central France. He was the son of Pierre Bonvalot and Louise-Félicie, née Congniasse des Jardins. He attended schooling at Troyes.

Expeditions from 1880-1887

In 1880–1882 he visited Russian controlled Central Asia and returned to France via Bukhara, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus. His travels were financed by the Minister of Public Instruction. In 1886, he set out for Russian Central Asia with Guillaume Capus, a botanist, ethnographer, and doctor of natural sciences, and designer Albert Pépin.

They departed from Tashkent in 1886 and traveled up to the border with Afghanistan. During the winter season, they remained in Samarkand and sought a way to cross the Pamir Mountains from north to south and reach China. In 1887 they crossed through Kyrgyz territory in the Alai Mountains. As a European, Bonvalot felt superior to the locals and used threats or force to obtain equipment, supplies, pack animals and porters. He crossed the Pamirs, Chitral, where he was detained for more than a month, and the Karakoram, until he reached Kashmir. He was rewarded for this expedition by the Société de Géographie in Paris.

Expedition of 1889

In 1889 Bonvalot was one of the first Europeans to visit the Tibetan Plateau. The expedition was financed by the Duke of Chartres and his son, Prince Henri of Orléans. who accompanied Bonvalot.

Bonvalot's original plan was to cross Asia and reach Tonkin in French Indochina. Bonvalot wanted to cross Europe and Russia by train and then continue on foot and horseback to the border with Chinese Turkestan. Bonvalot then wanted to be the first European to cross the Gobi and Lop Nor deserts. He thought that he could then cut across the Tibetan Plateau and try to visit Lhasa, which had been closed to foreigners for the last half a century. Finally he intended to cross 1,700 kilometers of land in eastern Tibet that had been unexplored by Europeans until he reached Yunnan, where he would travel down the Mekong River to Indochina. In total his planned expedition was 9,500 kilometers and traversed lands that were still unknown to Europeans. Bonvalot was accompanied in his travels by a Belgian missionary, Father De Deken (1852–1896, who spoke Chinese and joined the expedition to reach Shanghai with his Chinese servant), an Uzbek assistant, Rachmed, who joined the expedition in Russia, Abdoullah a translator, and Prince Henri of Orléans, who acted as his photographer and botanist.