When she was 12, Anjali Mitter Duva spent a year living in India with her Indian father and Jewish American mother. During a school vacation, the family traveled to Rajasthan, a desert region in the northwestern part of the country. After a long, uncomfortable train ride, they reached the medieval city of Jaisalmer, where a young teenager’s angsty frustration with family travel was quickly transformed into what she describes as pure awe.
“It’s completely gorgeous, with a stunningly blue sky and everything else in shades of orange, yellow, ochre and sandstone,” said Duva, who lives in Arlington, Mass. “Everything is super-saturated.”
In that stunning environment, Duva was particularly captivated by a local girl performing a sacred dance called kathak.
“I had been plucked out of my life for this year,” she recalls. “And here was my counterpart, this other 12-year-old girl. I remember this feeling of what made me be me, what made her be her, and how we were both there at the same place at the same time.”
That awe stayed with Duva. Nearly two decades after her trip, she published her first novel, “Faint Promise of Rain” (She Writes Press, 2014), set in the desert of Rajasthan and featuring as its protagonist a young Hindu dancer.
Travel, psychologists say, can change lives, especially when it’s to destinations that elicit awe and wonder. The feelings that…
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