The daughter of a Nepali brahmin family, priests to the rajah for generations, she was married at seven and widowed at nine. She spent some thirty years on the roads of India as an ascetic, fasting, standing at night in cold water, walking to the great shrines of the north and the south to find God. Around fifty she heard the Bible read aloud in a bazaar and became a Christian; after that she refused any settled work and walked and preached to the end.
In their own words
All this I suffered to find God.
Ada Lee, An Indian Priestess: The Life of Chundra Lela, 1903, ch. X, her own words as reported
Nobody knows how long those nights were, nor how I suffered before morning.
Ada Lee, An Indian Priestess: The Life of Chundra Lela, 1903, ch. V, her own words as reported
I cannot attend to worldly business. My only business is to preach the Gospel.
Ada Lee, An Indian Priestess: The Life of Chundra Lela, 1903, ch. VIII, her own words as reported