Adventurers, and not always ladylike

As for inconvenience, consider the 20th-century adventurer Penelope Chetwode, Lady Betjeman, who grew up in India where her father, Baron Chetwode, was commander-in-chief of the army. In 1974, in her 60s and having grown quite hefty, she returned to the Himalayas. She was faced with crossing a wide river by the only available means: floating on an inflatable buffalo hide. Wearing a vivid pink blouse, she clambered onto the back of a local guide about half her weight, who used his skinny arms and legs to paddle the makeshift raft across the water.

Certainly, similar stories abound of men and their travels, but an engaging exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery through next month, ''Off the Beaten Track: Three Centuries of Women Travellers," deals with the female experience -- its inconveniences as well as its adventure and daring.

Using images of women, and drawings and watercolors by those of them who were artists, the show chronicles their adventures. Some were also collectors, sending home Egyptian antiquities or bringing home a necklace made of hair cut from the head of a victim killed by a Hawaiian chief, both of which would mean trouble with customs officials today.

You don't often hear people laughing out loud at a museum show. They do in this crowd-pleaser, except for those holding their breath while tying themselves into the Victorian corset that is available to try on. It is a reminder that, for the more proper among these women, being in the jungle was no excuse for letting sartorial standards slide.

Except for those foreigners who traveled to England, all the women are British, and many of them are ''Lady" something or other. They do very well upholding the reputation of the British aristocracy as eccentric. When she was pregnant, for instance, Lady Betjeman, who was known to prefer animals to humans, said of her still-unborn child, ''I wish it could be a little horse."