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9 October 2026

In northern Pakistan, among the high mountains of the Karakoram, there comes a time when parts of the Hunza Valley seem to change almost overnight. Apricot trees begin to flower, bringing pale shades of white and pink against an otherwise rugged landscape.

The fruit that follows has long been part of everyday life here.

Apricots are eaten fresh during the season, but much of the harvest is also dried. Families can then keep the fruit for months, including through the colder part of the year. Apricot kernels and their oil have also traditionally found a place in local households.

There is something appealing about this relationship with a tree.

People wait for its flowers, watch the fruit grow, gather what the season gives them and preserve part of it for days when the branches will be bare again.

Perhaps those who live close to mountains understand seasons differently. Nature cannot be hurried there. A late frost matters. Sunshine matters. So does a good harvest.

Visitors may remember Hunza for its enormous mountains and extraordinary views.

Someone who lives there may remember the year by something much simpler—the first blossom on an apricot tree, the taste of the ripe fruit, and trays of apricots drying quietly in the sun.

Sometimes a place reveals itself not through its landmarks, but through what people put away for winter.

#Pakistan #Hunza #Karakoram #RajatChandraSarmah

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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9 October 2026

There are things we keep telling ourselves we will do when life becomes a little easier.

A journey we will take when work settles down. A book we will finally read when there is more time. A friend we will call when the days are less crowded. Sometimes even a simple afternoon with someone we love gets pushed aside because there always seems to be something more urgent.

I have often wondered why we are so confident about tomorrow.

Perhaps because tomorrow feels generous. It seems to have room for everything that today cannot accommodate.

But years have a quiet way of changing that calculation.

The things we postpone do not always disappear. They simply wait somewhere in the background, until one day we realise that the person who made those plans is older, the circumstances are different, and some opportunities have quietly closed.

This is not an argument for living recklessly or abandoning responsibility. Most of us have obligations that cannot simply be put aside.

It is only a reminder to leave a little space for life itself.

Call the person.

Read the book.

Take the journey if you can.

Sit somewhere without needing to be productive.

Tell someone that you remember.

We often imagine that the great moments will be the ones we remember most. I am no longer so sure. Perhaps, years from now, what stays with us will be something much smaller—a conversation that lasted longer than expected, an unexpected laugh, a road taken without much planning, or an ordinary afternoon that somehow felt complete.

Time rarely tells us when it is giving us a memory.

It simply gives us the moment.

And then it moves on.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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8 October 2026

There is a bird that spends an extraordinary amount of time decorating a house it may never live in.

It is the bowerbird.

The male builds a structure called a bower—not really a nest, but a kind of stage. Then comes the decoration.

Flowers. Leaves. Shells. Feathers. Stones. Berries. Anything that catches his eye.

And he does not simply throw things around.

He arranges them.

Some species even collect objects of particular colours and carefully place them around the bower. The whole display is meant to attract a female.

Think about that for a moment.

A bird spends hours collecting little things from the world and arranging them beautifully, hoping that someone will notice.

It sounds strangely familiar.

Perhaps nature has been quietly telling us for a very long time that beauty is sometimes created not because it is necessary, but because someone hopes another pair of eyes will appreciate it.

And perhaps that is not such a bad reason to make something beautiful.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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8 October 2026

High on the Tibetan Plateau, north of the Himalayas, life has long been shaped by cold winds, thin air and long distances. It is a landscape where even an ordinary cup of tea has a story.

Tibetan butter tea, known as po cha, is very different from the sweet tea familiar in many parts of the world. Traditionally, tea is prepared with butter and salt, producing a rich, savoury drink rather than a sugary one. Yak butter has traditionally been used in many households.

For someone encountering it for the first time, the taste can be surprising. But for people accustomed to the high plateau, it is much more than a beverage. It belongs to the rhythm of daily life.

A warm bowl or cup passed between family members or guests carries something quietly familiar: hospitality.

In a difficult climate, warmth has always been precious. Perhaps that is why food and drink in mountain cultures often become more than nourishment. They become part of memory.

The interesting thing about travelling through cultures is that we sometimes discover that the most ordinary object—a cup of tea—can tell us more about a place than a famous monument ever could.

#Tibet #TibetanCulture #Asia #RajatChandraSarmah

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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8 October 2026

When we are children, almost everything begins with a question.

Why does the moon follow us?
Why do people grow old?
Why does rain smell different from water?
Why do some people stay, while others leave?

We ask without embarrassment. We are not afraid that someone will think the question is foolish.

Then life happens.

We go to school, find work, build families, accept responsibilities, learn what is expected of us. Gradually, we become better at answering questions and strangely less willing to ask them.

Perhaps that is one of the quiet changes of growing older.

Albert Einstein once said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

I have always liked that thought because curiosity is not merely a child’s quality. It may be one of the things that keeps a person young long after youth has gone.

There are questions we should perhaps return to—not because we need answers, but because the questions themselves keep something alive inside us.

What still surprises me?

What have I changed my mind about?

What have I never really understood?

And, perhaps the most important one—

What am I still curious enough to discover?

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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7 October 2026

Some trees survive fire.

Some actually need it.

The giant sequoias of California have evolved alongside wildfire for thousands of years. Their thick, fire-resistant bark can protect mature trees from flames that would kill many other species.

But there is something even more surprising.

Fire can help create the conditions their seeds need.

When flames move through a forest, they clear away competing vegetation and open parts of the sequoia’s cones, allowing seeds to reach the ground.

So something that looks like destruction can also become part of renewal.

Of course, not every fire is beneficial. Modern, unusually intense wildfires can be devastating to forests.

But the older natural relationship between fire and sequoia is a remarkable reminder that nature does not always work in the simple categories we use.

We see fire and think: loss.

The tree’s story is more complicated.

Sometimes survival means resisting the fire.

Sometimes renewal begins after it has passed.

Perhaps that is why forests have so much to teach us.

They rarely tell a simple story.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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7 October 2026

Malaysia lies in Southeast Asia, just north of the equator. Its territory stretches across the Malay Peninsula and the island of Borneo, with Thailand to the north and Indonesia and Brunei among its close neighbours.

It is a country often associated with modern Kuala Lumpur, busy streets and towering buildings.

But some of Malaysia’s oldest stories are found much deeper in its forests.

Among the Indigenous communities of Malaysian Borneo, forests have traditionally been much more than a collection of trees.

They provide food, materials, medicines and knowledge passed from one generation to another.

One particularly fascinating example is the use of forest plants as natural dyes.

In parts of Borneo, traditional knowledge has included extracting colours from leaves, bark, roots and other plant materials to dye fibres and woven textiles.

The interesting part is not simply the colour.

It is the knowledge behind it.

Someone has to know which plant produces which shade.

When to collect it.

How to prepare it.

How to make the colour stay.

That knowledge cannot be learned from a label in a shop.

It comes from observation and repetition.

Perhaps this is one of the quiet forms of knowledge modern life sometimes overlooks.

A forest may look like wilderness to a visitor.

To someone who has grown up with it, the same forest can be a library.

Every plant has a name.

Every season has a lesson.

And every generation has something to remember.

#Malaysia #Borneo #SoutheastAsia #RajatChandraSarmah

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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7 October 2026

When did you last change your mind about something important?

Not because somebody defeated you in an argument.

Not because you were forced to.

Simply because you discovered that you had been wrong.

It is a surprisingly difficult question.

As we grow older, we collect opinions almost as carefully as we collect memories. Some have come from experience. Some from family. Some from books. Some from things we heard so many times that we eventually stopped questioning them.

Then, occasionally, something happens.

We meet a person.

Read a book.

Travel somewhere.

Or simply live long enough to see a situation from the other side.

And suddenly, an opinion that felt permanent becomes less certain.

I think there is something beautiful about that.

Changing one’s mind is often treated as weakness. Perhaps it should sometimes be treated as evidence that the mind is still alive.

A closed mind protects what it already knows.

A curious mind asks what it may have missed.

Maybe wisdom is not having fewer questions as we grow older.

Maybe it is becoming more comfortable with saying:

“I may have been wrong.”

And perhaps that is one of the most liberating sentences a person can learn to say.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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6 October 2026

For more than a hundred years, people thought they knew all the living penguin species.

Then science surprised us.

In September 2026, researchers reported genetic evidence for a previously unrecognised species of gentoo penguin from the remote Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean.

The discovery came from looking carefully at genetics rather than simply at appearance.

That is what I find fascinating.

The penguins were not hiding from us in some completely unknown corner of the planet.

They had been living there.

We simply had not understood their story correctly.

Sometimes nature does not reveal something new by producing something that has never existed before.

It reveals something that has been there all along.

A new species of gentoo penguin was identified through genetic evidence, according to research reported this September.

It makes me wonder how much of the natural world we still misunderstand.

We have satellites, laboratories, cameras and computers.

And yet, occasionally, a creature quietly reminds us that there are still pages missing from our book of life.

Perhaps discovery is not always about going somewhere no one has gone.

Sometimes it is about looking again at something we thought we already knew.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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6 October 2026

Thailand sits at the heart of mainland Southeast Asia, between Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Malaysia. To its west and south lie the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand.

For many people, Thailand means Bangkok, beaches and temples.

But some of the country’s most interesting stories are found along its rivers and canals.

In central Thailand, the Chao Phraya River has long been closely tied to settlement, farming, transport and trade. The river and its network of waterways helped shape the communities that grew around them. The Tourism Authority of Thailand describes the Chao Phraya as particularly important to the history of central Thailand.

There are places where the old relationship with water can still be felt.

Markets once depended heavily on boats. Houses were built close to waterways. People travelled by river because, for generations, water was often the easiest road available.

Today Thailand has highways, railways and modern cities.

Yet the old waterways have not disappeared.

Perhaps that is what I find interesting about Thailand.

Modern life has arrived, but it has not completely erased the older rhythm of the country.

A river can be a geographical feature on a map.

But for people who grow up beside it, the river can become something much more personal.

It can be the road they knew as children.

The place where they worked.

The view from their home.

The water that quietly carried generations of their family through life.

#Thailand #SoutheastAsia #ChaoPhraya #RajatChandraSarmah

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com