Reshu Bashyal: What "Orchid Hunting" Taught a Chevening Scholar

Before Chevening, Reshu Bashyal had many setbacks, but never a shortage of courage and self-trust.

Not one or two setbacks. Several grant applications and funding opportunities, and not a single one had taken her to a final round. Rejection emails arrived, at times, month after month.

She had a solid profile in the environmental sector due to her prior involvement in reputed I/NGOs and even as an Environmentalist, and real conservation experience, but she wanted to go deeper specifically into wildlife trade research. She had found DICE, the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent, and a potential supervisor whose name kept coming up whenever she described her research interests. She had made up her mind. She had made a list of scholarships.

The Chevening deadline had almost passed.

And then, an additional day appeared, like a gift.

She thought for a bit. Started drafting. Once it was ready, she asked her younger brother Karun, who has a much stronger command of English than she does, to review it. He returned it with only minor corrections, and a comment that he was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the application.

She submitted.

But she is careful about how this gets told. "It would be unfair to say that I secured a Chevening Scholarship with just one day of preparation. That application was built on years of learning, persistence, and rejection. Each failed attempt taught me how to communicate my ideas more clearly."

———

Ask Reshu what made her application stand out, and the answer is immediate, and singular.

"The authenticity made my application stand out. I was writing my own story, rather than copying others. My advice to anyone working on their applications is: write your story, because we are all unique."

There is something quietly radical about how little drama she assigns to the moment of almost-not-applying. She does not describe a crisis of confidence or a dramatic turnaround. She did not allow past failures to define her narrative. She instead, presented a clear vision of where she wanted to go and how Chevening would help her. She simply wrote what was true.

"I always believe that good things come to those who dare to try. I never let my or others doubt win."

After being shortlisted, she reached out to Chevening alumni with similar backgrounds and prepared her answers. She did mock interviews with her mentors Amy and Jacob, elder brother Barun, Kumar, a colleague, and previous Chevening alumni Bidhya and Tanuja. And in the days before the interview, she built a specific kind of preparation document.

Not full sentences. Not scripted answers. Bullet points, for each potential question, all linked back to her essay questions, with at least one concrete example identified for each, ready to explain if needed.

"Making a bullet list of responses, not whole sentences, and identifying one example you are proud of and can explain, linked to leadership, networking, and so on. This is very helpful."

Walking out of the interview, she was her own harshest critic and her own biggest cheerleader at once. Some answers had landed perfectly. For others, she had been honest enough to pause, rethink, and answer again. She knew that everyone who had made it to that round was a good fit, and she had made peace, before even knowing the result, with trying again next year if this wasn't it.

She was incredibly excited. She was about to pursue her dream degree. But the day she left felt nothing like what she had imagined.

Everyone in her family was unusually quiet.

She still remembers the journey to the airport, her buba (dad), her brother Karun, her cousin Angel. Throughout the entire drive, none of them spoke a single word. None of them even looked at one another.

Her mother did not come to the airport. She knew she would cry.

"Looking back, that silent journey spoke louder than words. It reflected the love, pride, and emotions we all felt but could not express. It is a memory I will carry with me for the rest of my life."

What struck her most about arriving in the UK was the speed. People rushing to lectures, ten minutes early or risking the back row behind the screens. Trains and buses arriving and leaving exactly on schedule. Time, treated everywhere as a resource, not just in routines, but woven into how people seemed to think.

"In that moment, I realised why the UK is so different. That respect for time was reflected in the pace of everyday life, punctuality and efficiency woven into the culture, shaping not just routines, but mindset."

There was also a more domestic kind of culture shock. Back home, she had rarely managed groceries, kitchen utensils, bedding, the logistics of an independent household. She hadn't realised that a university apartment meant managing all of it herself and that the room only had a bed with a dunlop!      There were emails, presumably, with detailed instructions. She couldn’t read them all as she was trying to finish up her professional commitments.          

For the first two days, she slept relying on her overcoat to escape the cold of late September. It took her two full weeks to sort everything out.

Socially, it was easier than she expected. Everyone she approached offered a smile and a helping hand.

She was invited on an "orchid hunting" trip with Amy, Susanne, and Rosemarie, her mentor and her friends and families    

As someone passionate about orchid conservation, the phrase made her uneasy. Hunting. In her work, that word usually meant extraction, wild orchids removed from forests, displayed in private gardens, photographed for social media. The opposite of conservation.

But, as all these wonderful ladies were orchid enthusiasts, she knew they  wouldn’t “hunt” a single plant.

She soon discovered the word meant something else entirely here. In a small meadow, the group knelt on the ground to observe tiny terrestrial orchids, some resembling monkeys, dancing ladies, even human figures. Around them, other enthusiasts carefully identified species with field guides and hand lenses.

It was a celebration of orchids in the wild. Not a search to collect them.

"The experience left a lasting impression on me and highlighted a culture I wish we had more of in Nepal. Encouraging appreciation without collection is essential if we are to conserve these remarkable jewels of biodiversity for future generations."

One word. Two meanings. The gap between them is the gap she has spent her career trying to close.

Every Chevening story has a turning point, something unexpected, something that couldn't have been planned. For Reshu, it was unambiguous: "Definitely the COVID thing."

She had planned her year carefully, six months dedicated entirely to her studies, sightseeing saved for the second half. COVID-19 had other plans. Many of the travel opportunities she had hoped for simply disappeared.

"It taught me an important lesson. Opportunities do not always wait for the perfect moment. Time moves on regardless of our plans, and sometimes it is important to embrace experiences as they come rather than postponing them for later. Since then, I have tried to make the most of opportunities when they arise, knowing that tomorrow is never guaranteed."

She also speaks about the isolation of that period with unusual tenderness. Living alone in a small university apartment, surrounded by people she had barely exchanged hellos with, she had expected to struggle. Like everyone, she adapted. Like everyone, she adapted. When COVID restrictions were eased, Rosemarie would come to take her to their home and go for another orchid hunting and apple picking.

"One of the most valuable lessons I learned was not to take people for granted. The isolation taught me the importance of human connection and kindness. I realised that even a simple word of appreciation can change someone's mood, confidence, and motivation."

———

Just before Chevening, the rejection emails had kept coming, month after month. She never lost faith in her abilities, but she felt guilty, taking up her mentors' time and support without tangible outputs to show for it.

During her Chevening year, something shifted. She and her colleagues at Greenhood, together with her mentors, developed a project proposal on the medicinal orchid trade in Nepal, built on the foundation of one of her earlier rejected proposals. Her mentors, experts in orchid conservation and trade, gave her something she hadn't had before: a real education in the art of project design and proposal writing.

That project became the first work she “led on ground” after returning to Nepal.

Since then, she has designed and led/co-led several projects on wildlife conservation, illegal trade, notably from the support of the Conservation Leadership Programme, EDGE Fellowship, Rufford Foundation Grants, including, in 2025, securing a Whitley Fund for Nature Award. The Whitley Awards are among the most prestigious recognitions in global conservation, supporting grassroots conservation leaders whose work is making a measurable difference.

"Looking back, everything and everyone I encountered has helped shape my career and resilience as a conservation professional, and I have a long way to go."

Her MSc dissertation focused on species misidentification in wildlife trade. COVID meant she couldn't interview respondents in person, every interview had to happen online.

That constraint became, unexpectedly, a discovery. While researching medicinal plant species on digital platforms for her dissertation, she found multiple other species being traded illegally online, a dimension of wildlife trade that in-person research might never have surfaced.

That single observation has since become several research projects on digital wildlife trade. Her dissertation was developed into a publication, which she and her supervisor used to design further research involving in-person interviews and experiments. Two of her projects under the Rufford Small Grants are designed directly from that original dissertation. At Greenhood, there are other ongoing works on species identification led by her and her colleagues designed to support enforcement and local communities.

A pandemic-forced constraint, followed all the way through, became an important research direction.

———

Hunting. Or appreciation. Same word, two completely different ways of relating to something rare.

Reshu Bashyal's career has been a long argument for the second meaning, applied not just to orchids, but to opportunities, to people.

The unsuccessful attempts were not failures to be discarded, they were carefully studied, and eventually folded into the something that worked. A pandemic that cancelled her travel plans was not a setback to resent, it was a constraint she worked with, and it opened a research direction she couldn't have planned. The isolation of a UK lockdown didn't make her bitter about human connection, it taught her not to take it for granted.

Greenhood Nepal, where she is now Research and Program Lead, has grown into a platform for conservation aspirants, opening doors for many. Her message to anyone in Nepal staring at the Chevening application right now:

"Be authentic and honest in your responses. That authenticity comes from trusting in yourself and writing your own story."

Don't hunt for the version of yourself you think they want. Find the one that's already there, and let them see it.

Applications for the 2026–27 Chevening Scholarship open in August 2026.

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Reshu Bashyal is a Chevening Scholar (2019), Research and Program Lead at Greenhood Nepal, and a 2025 Whitley Fund for Nature Award winner for her work safeguarding medicinal plants in Nepal. She studied MSc Conservation and International Wildlife Trade at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), University of Kent. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Story #013, ScholarsNext | Chevening Nepal Series

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