Ella Maillart was born on February 20, 1903, in Geneva. She discovered her love of reading – especially travel writing – early on. In 1913, when the family moved to Le Creux-de-Genthod on the shores of Lake Geneva, she began sailing with her friend and neighbor Hermine de Saussure, known as Miette. Winter brought other pursuits: skiing and hockey. Maillart competed in sailing at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris and went on to represent Switzerland in several world skiing championships between 1931 and 1934.
Maillart eventually gave up sailing, but only after crossing the Mediterranean several times. In 1930, having tried her hand at various jobs without ever finding something she enjoyed, she set off on her first journey. She went to the Soviet Union to see firsthand how other people lived, staying in Moscow for nearly six months and spending time in the Caucasus.
In 1932, she traveled through Soviet Turkestan and glimpsed China for the first time from the mountains she was climbing. In 1934, she was dispatched to Manchuria, in northeastern China, as a reporter for French daily newspaper Le Petit Parisien. It was there that she visited Manchukuo, a puppet state established and controlled by Japan.
In 1935, she met up with British writer and military officer Peter Fleming in Peking. The two decided to set off together for Xinjiang, a region in northwestern China that had long been closed to foreigners and was then in the grip of a years-long civil war. Their trip – lasting seven months and covering over 6,000 kilometers – took them all the way from Peking to India.
In 1939, Maillart set off on a new adventure with Swiss writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach, driving a Ford from Geneva to Kabul. When news of the Second World War broke, Schwarzenbach headed back to Europe while Maillart settled in India, where she remained until 1945.
After returning to Switzerland, Maillart split her time between Geneva and Chandolin, a village looking over the Val d’Anniviers valley high in the Swiss Alps. Between 1957 and 1987, she led a series of organized excursions through Asia. She also gave numerous talks about her travels, using her own photographs as part of her presentations.
In 1988, Maillart donated her photographs to Photo Elysée and her writings to the Bibliothèque de Genève. The two institutions now manage her legacy and highlight her work, in collaboration with the Ella Maillart Foundation. Photo Elysée has devoted several exhibitions to Maillart, including in 1990, 1997 and 2003.
Maillart died in Chandolin on March 27, 1997, at the age of 94.
