Personal Life
Przhevalsky is known to have had a personal relationship with Tasya Nuromskaya, whom he met in Smolensk. According to one legend, during their last meeting Tasya cut off her braid and gave it to him, saying that the braid would travel with him until their marriage. Unfortunately, Tasya died of a sunstroke while Przhevalsky was on an expedition.
Another woman in Przhevalsky's life was a mysterious young lady whose portrait, along with a fragment of poetry, was found in Przhevalsky's album. In the poem, she asks him to stay with her and not to go to Tibet, to which he responded in his diary: "I will never betray the ideal, to which is dedicated all of my life. As soon as I write everything necessary, I will return to the desert...where I will be much happier than in gilded salons that can be acquired by marriage".
Some researchers have claimed that Przhevalsky was a homosexual, who "despised women", and that his young male assistants that accompanied him on each of his journeys (including Nikolay Yagunov, aged 16, Mikhail Pyltsov, Fyodor Eklon, 18, and Yevgraf), could have been his lovers
Read more about this topic: Nikolay Przhevalsky
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