Lingering Lessons from the Laliguras
There is a saying we know well — stop and smell the roses.
But in Nepal, the mountains offer a different invitation.
Here, it is the laliguras —
a red that does not whisper, but sings —
scattered along the trails like small, burning reminders
that life is not meant to be hurried through.
During my six-day ascent and descent of Mardi Himal,
rising to 4,200 metres,
I chose — perhaps for the first time in a long while —
to move in defiance of urgency.
I did not chase the summit.
I did not measure the days in distance covered or time saved.
I chose instead to linger.
When I booked my sherpa for seven days,
there was laughter — gentle, amused —
as though I had mistaken the rules of the mountain.
Five days, they said. That is enough.
But I was not there to be enough.
I was there to be present.
This journey was not a trek.
It was a return.
A quiet pilgrimage to my ancestral land —
to stand upon the soil that shaped stories before me,
to listen for something older than language,
to remember what it feels like to belong.
So I gave myself more time.
More breath.
More space between one step and the next.
And in that widening, the mountain met me differently.
My body softened into the climb.
Acclimatisation became a conversation, not a battle.
And I reached heights I had never known —
not by pushing,
but by allowing.
My sherpa — steady, intuitive —
led me away from the obvious.
We wandered into the lives of goat and sheep herders,
shared fresh goat’s milk in the shelter of a farmhouse
while thunder rolled across the hills,
stood at quiet, unmarked viewpoints
where the sun dissolved into colour without an audience.
We paused at temples
that held their silence like a sacred offering.
We stood before monuments
that asked for nothing but our presence.
And everywhere —
there were moments.
Unscripted.
Uncaptured by expectation.
Alive.
We took footage, yes —
but what we carried back could never be contained in frames:
the sharp edge of difficulty,
the sudden swell of joy,
the quiet dignity of the land and its people.
The journey, I realised,
had gently loosened its grip on the idea of an end.
Because I stopped to smell the laliguras.
Because I did not rush past what was blooming.
Because I allowed life to meet me in real time —
unfiltered, unedited, unrepeatable.
At OASIS, we speak often of presence.
But presence is not always found in stillness.
Sometimes, it is found in the deliberate softening of pace.
In choosing not to arrive too quickly.
In letting each step be enough.
The laliguras do not bloom in haste.
It does not measure its worth in how quickly it is seen.
It simply opens — fully, unapologetically —
and in doing so, it transforms the path.
This April,
may we remember that we, too, are allowed to open slowly.
To take the longer way.
To pause without reason.
To notice what is quietly flowering along the edges of our days.
Wherever you are —
in motion or in stillness —
there is something waiting to be witnessed.
So soften.
Slow down.
And when the moment finds you,
Stay.
Long enough
to smell the laliguras.
“In the pause between doing and becoming, there is a fragrance to life—one that can only be experienced when we slow down enough to truly notice.”