With 28 camels, six horses, four Mongolian camel drivers, ten Chinese specimen collectors, and a whole lot of moxie, Janet Elliot Wulsin set out with her husband Frederick for the far reaches of Tibet, China, and Mongolia to study the people, flora, and fauna of the region.

The year was 1923 and little in young Janet’s gilded childhood suggested the dusty boots of a world explorer. A daughter of privilege, hers was the world of Edith Wharton civility, where young ladies prepared for a good marriage, not for rafting down the Yellow River on a raft of inflated yak skins.

But Janet was no ordinary society belle. She had a deep thirst for adventure. At age 24, then Janet Elliott left New York for Paris for what was to be the first stop on an extraordinary life journey–a journey that would take her to explore the world, and the far peaks of her own soul.

Guests:

Mabel Cabot, daughter of Janet Elliott Wulsin, author of “Vanished Kingdoms: A Woman Explorer in Tibet, China, and Mongolia 1921-1925″