Nandita Royal Attar Classic & Elegant Premium Masala Incense

  

A reasonably attractive masala / perfumed incense from Nandita, distributed in the West by Wonder Incense. Available in Australia, in America, and in the UK - generally for less than £2 (or equivalent) for 15g. I like Nandita incense, it is generally good masala, and sometimes, as with Wood Spice, is incense that I adore. I'm not hugely impressed with this one, though it is likeable enough. 

Attar is an essential oil mostly associated with roses. I'm not entirely clear on the difference between an essential oil and an attar. Sources seem to indicate that an attar is hydro-distilled while essential oils are steam distilled - though from my reading, it seems that hydro and steam distilled are the same: place the plant material in water, heat the water and catch the distilled steam. If using rose petals, the distilled part would be attar of roses, while the liquid that remains after distillation would be rose water. Attar is the Arabic name for perfume, so the more I look at this, the more it seems that there is no technical difference between attar and essential oil, though there is a cultural association of roses with attar. 

The sticks are somewhat crudely hand made. Fairly thin (though quite variable in thickness) hand rolled masala paste on hand cut bamboo splints, with a gentle coating of tree bark dust. Some sticks are thin and bendy. It all looks quite bargain basement. There is a volatile perfume on the stick - slightly floral, sandalwood, pine. Not great. More like a room freshener than what I would feel is a natural attar. The scent on the burn is more attractive, though rests more on the perfume than on the masala ingredients. The scent is allusive - never clearly defined.  It presents as a sort of generic perfumed incense with an underlying masala quality. Unclear and scrappy floral perfume incense, slightly scratched, with unclear and scrappy sandalwood masala. For all my unflattering descriptions it's actually an OK incense, just not a good one.  There is rose in here, but not quality rose. 

Date: July 2023  Score: 31 

Nandita of Mumbai

Om Brand Vedamrut Chandan Premium Incense Sticks

  

A new incense company for me.  Om Sai Agarbatti Works (also trading as Om Brand Agarbatti)  were founded in 1988 in Mumbai, and they make their own synthetic fragrances in-house. They do have a range of incenses, including masala, though this new Vedamrut range of four fragrances appears to be predominantly perfumed. 

Bought from Aavyaa as a combo deal with three other fragrances under the same brand. The prices at Aavyaa are generally around twice the domestic RRP, though after a certain order value shipping is included, which generally makes them good value for money for international customers, as shipping usually triples the domestic price, at least. I confess that the quality appearance of the packaging, combined with the price, and my prior experience of buying decent incense from Aavyaa misled me into thinking I was buying decent proper job masala incense. Sadly, that is not the case. This is a perfumed-charcoal incense of low quality, which simply has a burning perfume smell, and little of the sandalwood as suggested by the title. It's not a bad incense suitable only as a toilet air-freshener, but it's not good enough for the home. This will get used in our outhouse where we feed the cats.  

This is pretty average low end perfumed incense. The only thing "premium" about this (other than the price and the box) is the size of the sticks. Generally a low end incense stick is about a gram, these are about 2g, so there are about 25 sticks in this 50g box.  On the stick there is more fruit to the scent than sandalwood, and it's quite fresh and sharp and inclined to be citric. The scent on the burn is fairly vague, a little sharp and smoky, with notes of burning, some wool, some tobacco, and - yes - some sandalwood. Mostly I'm just seeing this as vague and slightly irritating perfumed incense smoke. But I could just be dismissing it because of my disappointment at discovering it's an everyday perfumed incense when I was expecting an interesting masala. 


Date: July 2023    Score:  23

***

Om Sai (Om Brand) Agarbatti

 What's The Best Incense In The World?

India luxury box incense

Kailapira Badrinath Premium Dhoopsticks

Bought from Aavyaa for ₹300 (approx. £3.00), so not cheap, but there are 40 dhoop sticks, and it is quality packaging. Recommended retail price is  ₹160, though that is a domestic price - export price would be much higher if a Western store did stock it, so Aavyaa's prices are very appealing for international customers, especially with free international shipping. 

This is the second incense by Kailapira that I have reviewed, the other being Alaknanda, in the same "River" series. The company rescue abandoned temple flowers to prevent river pollution, so each  fragrance in the series is named after a river local to the company, which is based in the Himalayan foothills of Dehradun in the north of India. Alongside the flowers from the local temples, water from the rivers is used in the making of the incense (I love the idea of the water from the rivers being used, though I wonder if this is something quite common in incense making if the factory is near a river). Badrinath is not a river, but a temple settlement on the banks of the Alaknanda River, though it is possible that the Alaknanda is  known as the Badrinath river in that area, as the Thames is known as The Isis when passing through Oxford. 

 

As with the Alaknanda, the ingredients include "Synthetic Compounds" which appear to refer to synthetic perfume as - apart from the dried flowers - no other fragrant ingredient is listed. This is, however, for me, a more successful incense. The scent on the stick is not pleasant, but is interesting (which does tend to attract me) - a combination of dried sick, stale cheese, decaying flowers, old leather, hot plastic, and cow dung. 

These dhoop sticks are a little slimmer than the Alaknanda, and do catch light more quickly, though there is some resistance. The burn (using the free cow dung stand which appears to be in all the Kailapira packs) is slow and steady. This scent is more appealing than the Alaknanda - largely, I suspect, because there appears to be less reliance on synthetic perfume and the sticks are thinner so there is perhaps less sawdust in proportion to the flower powder. Perhaps when sorting the flower petals into colours (which seems to be the standard approach when making incense from temple flowers), some colours are more fragrant than others, and these sticks are made from the more fragrant petals. The scent here feels more authentically floral - nothing defined, but a definite sense of heady and slightly decomposing petals - such as you get at funerals, or - more particularly - at memorial sites. I recall the scent of the flowers left at Kensington Gardens after the death of Princess Diana (that was extraordinary - when we went we saw rows of coaches lined up with nobody on board, but full of floral tributes that the drivers were unloading and placing by the gates - it appeared that across the nation people had hired coaches to take their floral tributes to Kensington Gardens. Never again do I think I will experience such a spontaneous outpouring of national grief for one individual). 

Anyway. I like these dhoop sticks. Where the Alaknanda failed, these have succeeded; and all the aspects of the packaging and the notion of using temple flowers and water from holy Himalayan rivers comes to something because the scent itself is decent. Not special or heavenly, but decent enough to enjoy, and to become a part of the intention to do something positive and good. Yes, I like this. 

Date: July 2023   Score:  33 

Kailapira Alaknanda Premium Dhoopsticks

 

Just checking in on this one again, as the box is so attractive, and I gave it such a low score. Having burned a few Phool incense since July, it is fairly clear that Kailapira are copying Phool. The pull out drawer type of packaging, the style and colouring of the packet design, the story of saving sacred rivers, helping the poor and marginalised, and reusing temple flowers, are all copied from Phool. And, like Phool, the finished product smells of dirty water and damp, decaying flowers. Though, mostly, it smells of sawdust. It really presents as though the company just got together some old flowers petals and sawdust, and made a dhoop incense stick out of it. Oh, guess what, that is exactly what has happened. Piss poor stuff.  Smells like cheap perfume-dipped incense where the perfume has all evaporated.  I think I may just throw this away. I'll keep the box though, that is useful. 

Date: Dec 2023    Score: 18 

First review

Bought from Aavyaa for ₹240 (approx £2.40). Kailapira is a new company for me; I was attracted because they are another company, like Phool with all their incenses and Ranga Rao with their Pushkarini, who make incense from discarded temple flowers.  Kailapira is a brand name of Jagrati Associates, a small company founded in 2021 by Rajeev Bansal in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, in the north of India. They employ youngsters on a drug rehabilitation programme, and ensure that the incense is organic and bamboo and charcoal free. They have a video which explains how they work. The flowers are collected, cleaned and sorted, then dried and powdered, and mixed with other ingredients before being formed into dhoop sticks by machine.  The main scent is delivered by fragrant oils. 

The packaging is attractive and well made, giving the impression of a quality product. As with Japanese and Phool incense, the packaging is in the form of a tray which slides out - useful to keep when the incense is finished, as it can be reused to store other incense or watches or ear-rings, etc. The name, Alaknanda, comes from a Himalayan river, one of the two sources for the Ganges river.  Part of the aim of the company is to prevent rivers from being polluted by discarded temple flowers and general waste - which is, of course, the main aim of Phool. There is a square dhoop holder included, which is made from cow dung and red earth. 

The scent on the dhoop is perfumed, delicate, floral, faintly room freshener pine, and pleasant without being especially appealing. Floral scents are generally not among my favourites, nor are delicate scents ones that get me excited. And this one just feels too synthetic. At which point I look to the back of the pack to read the ingredients: Temple Flowers, Saw Dust, Joss Powder, Surokhar, Guar Gum, & Synthetic Compound.  "Suokhar" is Potassium nitrate, also known as saltpetre. The only fragrant ingredients are the dried flower powder, and possibly the Synthetic Compound. So the scent on the dhoop must be a synthetic perfume. 

It takes a while to get fully lit, but the upside of that is that it burns slowly and evenly. A slow burn tends to favour the fragrant release of top note perfumes. In this case that doesn't happen, and mostly what is noticed during the burn is the aroma of smouldering sawdust and garden waste. Which is, essentially, what this product contains. A note on the sawdust. The company make a claim of being charcoal free and eco-friendly, but we must be aware and accept that burning sawdust is not eco-friendly and is considered more damaging to the environment than burning charcoal.  The best use of wood is as furniture or building material, that way the wood keeps the carbon locked inside. Any form of wood burning, be it charcoal or sawdust, puts carbon back into the atmosphere. It is what it is. Pretending that burning sawdust is eco-friendly is pulling the wool over our eyes. Let us be honest and upfront about our activities. 

For all the quality packaging and good intent, this is essentially a poor quality product which produces a faint smouldering sawdust smell.  It is not worth ₹240 (or even  ₹160, when bought direct from the company) - it is style and image over content. Because the smell is so modest it is not actually offensive, and would be suitable for some forms of cleansing around the house. Because of the auspicious nature of the temple flowers, this would also favour modest everyday spiritual cleansing.  We'll be burning ours in the outhouse. 


Date: July 2023   Score: 24 

 What's The Best Incense In The World?

Tulasi Nag Champa & Arruda Incense Sticks

 

I started reviewing this over a fortnight ago, and then got bogged down. This range has confused me, and I think I have been somewhat mean on the scores of all bar the first one, mainly because the secondary scent does not make itself felt on the burn. Ignoring that consideration, the sticks are actually decent quality masala, and are very fine examples of Nag Champa - a scent that is a blend of  floral champaca (magnolia) and woody sandalwood. It is a heady and successful combination that is hugely popular in the West. 

Combining the Nag Champa scent with various other scents is an interesting and appealing idea, though I'm not convinced, at least in this series, that it has worked. This may be because the additional scents, as here, appear to be from a fragrant oil or perfume. My assumption (and this is only a guess, I may be wrong), is that Tulasi add a different perfume to the finished Nag Champa sticks. This perfume, because of its natural volatility, is noticeable on the stick, but because it was added to the surface of the finished stick gets evaporated too quickly during the burn to make itself known against the dominance of the masala ingredients.  

The Arruda aspect of the incense is the herb Ruta graveolens,  which is used both as an ornamental plant and as a flavouring in cooking, despite it being toxic. This Arruda has a sage like quality - fresh, dusty, clean, slightly bitter, with faintly orange notes. It's very pleasant, and makes itself noticeable on the stick where it has been applied as a fragrant oil. My problem with this stick, as it is with the other sticks in the range (apart from the Tulasi Nag Champa - which does not have an additional scent) is that on the burn the additional scent, in this case the Arruda, does not appreciably make itself felt.  

On the plus side, this is a very pleasing Nag Champa scent. I could be convinced there's a touch of orange mixed in with the generic Nag Champa.  I intend at some point doing a comparison of the whole series. Meanwhile, I'm marking this, and all the other Nag Champa Delights, as 35 - midway in my "Enjoyable, decent quality scents" ranking. 

The full range of Nag Champa Delights

Date: July 2023   Score: 35

I am going to revisit all the Tulasi Nag Champa Delights.  

***

More Tulasi reviews