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At one point, while reading The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye, I said I felt like I was falling in love. It was just that immersive and beautiful. The book, published in 1978 tells the story of an orphan named Ash, the son of British parents, who is raised as an Indian Hindu by his nanny, Sita. Sita was in constant fear that Ash's British roots would be discovered and he'd be killed, so she told him that she was his mother. She also told him of a perfect valley in the Himalayas, where there would be peace. He shared this dream of a peaceful valley with an Indian princess named Anjuli. Anjuli was not accepted by most of the people in her home because her mother was Russian and, like Ash, Anjuli yearned to escape a world of betrayal and murder.
"Ash did not know that he had been born within sight of those snows, or that he had spent his earliest years among the high Himalayas, falling asleep to the sight of them rose-dyed by the sunset or silver under the moon, and waking to see them turn from apricot and amber to dazzling white in the full blaze of the morning. They were part of his subconscious mind, because once, long ago, he had known them by heart as other children know the frieze painted on a nursery wall. But looking at them now, he felt sure that somewhere in the folds of those mountains lay the valley that Sita used to speak of at bedtime: their own valley."
-M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions
