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