updated: Apr 15 2021, 12:19 ist
I had only seen cherry blossoms in Japanese and Korean movies and heard of their symbolism in poetry. I found them precious, beautiful and foreign. As a botanist, I try to steer away from comparing the beauty of flowers. Cherry blossoms, however, made me helplessly fall for them back in 2018, when I witnessed them for the first time. No, I didn’t make an overseas trip to Korea or Japan; I found my very own cherry blossom paradise in the small Himalayan state of Sikkim.
In the first week of November 2018, as I was travelling from Gangtok to Mangan in North Sikkim, I saw lines of cherry blossoms; their luscious pink petals were a stark contrast to the clear blue skies, turning the landscape into Japanese fairy-tale.