Xiang Lian Jia Li Man Dan (Kalimantan Agarwood)

 

Curious scent on the stick. None of the Xiang Lian incenses have listed oils or perfumes in the ingredients, and this Jia Li Man Dan is no different - Google Lens translate the ingredients as "Kalimantan incense powder, sticky powder", and nothing else. Yet there is a room freshener scent on the stick. "Old Book Leather, Twine, and Sandalwood" could be the name. The scent on the burn is similar, though faded, old, faint, and mixed with some stale flowers. Kalimantan is the main part of Borneo, and produces agarwood with varying reports on its quality. This is grey, dusty agarwood, and is likely produced from low resin wild agarwood, which can be bought quite cheaply. 

Available as part of a set of 11 fragrances from Amazon, Temu, and Shein, for around £8. Or by itself from Dylans Den for £3. 

Date: May 2025   Score: 23

***

Good & bad Chinese incense

Xiang Lian

Agarwood incense

Xiang Lian Jiang Zhen Xiang (Sandalwood)

 

Just when you thought it was boring to return to the water (in this case Asian wood based incense), a clean and simple sandalwood raises its dorsal fin and delivers a clean and simple woody note. OK, this isn't a moment of greatness, but it's a lift above the crude Agarwood I've just burned.  I guess the essential difference is that sandalwood is cheaper than agarwood, and so for the same amount of money you can get a better quality sandalwood than agarwood. Anyway, ho hum, this - at the end of the burn - is just a simple woody scent. It lacks the oily richness that makes sandalwood attractive to me. But if you like dry woody sandalwood, and are not looking for heavenly delights, this is cheap and effective.  

Available as part of a set of 11 fragrances from Amazon, Temu, and Shein, for around £8. Or by itself from DylansDen for £3. 

Date: May 2025   Score: 25

***

Good & bad Chinese incense

Xiang Lian

Sandalwood

Xiang Lian Wu Chen Xiang (Agarwood)

 

Mild soapy floral aroma on the stick. Like a body spray for a young teen. Jasmine, daisies, and red roses mingled with fresh cardboard. Scent on the burn is mild and woody - a blend of burning grass and smouldering paper. Meh. 

I've really tried to get into Asian wood based incense, but when I travel away to incense from around the world, returning here is such a sad disappointment. This is not awful stuff, it's just very low key. Not quality wood, and the fragrance so faint there is little point. I have to waft it in my direction to get anything, and then I just get the off-notes of the combustible material. Or perhaps what I get is the cheap agarwood they've used. With the best will in the world, there's not a lot here. 

Available as part of a set of 11 fragrances from Amazon, Temu, and Shein, for around £8. Or by itself from Dylans Den for £3. 

Date: May 2025   Score: 23 

***

Xiang Lian

Agarwood incense

HEM Precious Lavender cones

 

It's OK. A bit meh. A tad smoky. Not much going on. But it's soapy sweet with an awareness of herby lavender. Not great, but an acceptable everyday room freshener.  Light it up, stick it in the toilet. job done. 

Date: May 2025   Score: 23

***

HEM Corporation

Best of Lavender

Sai Handicrafts Oudh

   

Second review - scroll down for earlier

I speculated in May last year (2025) that Pinkesh Parikh of Sai Handicrafts in Hitchin was sourcing his incense from Vrindavan (and maybe he is); however since then I've learned that the incense sold in Vrindavan is sourced from incense houses across India, including from Pune.  A few months ago Brief Chemistry sent me some sticks he had bought from three different sources (Sai Handicraft, Pilgrims Fair Trade as a Pushkar Incense, and Vrindavan Bazaar) with three different names which he felt were all the same incense. I agree with him. The incenses are Pushkar Incense Ruhe Oud, Vrindavan Bazaar Ruhe Oud, Vrindavan Bazaar Blue Lotus, and this Sai Handicrafts Oudh. 

   

The scent on the stick is rich, oily, resinous, aged wood, with some waxy jasmine floral notes and a gentle aldehyde sparkle in the nose. It's lovely. The scent notes in the accord are perhaps grouped too close together for my taste, but I do find it a compelling draw. The sample that Brief Chemistry sent is a tad fresher, richer, stronger than my Sai Oudh, and the other samples, but the accord is the same. 

The scent on the burn is beautiful. Softer and more rounded than the cold throw scent on the stick. A tasty blend of aged woods, heady oils, and florals - mostly, for me, hovering around waxy jasmine. Some patchouli in the mix. Some fresh cut grass. The scent of marijuana on the breeze during a Seventies rock festival. Yeah, it's lovely.   Moved the score a tad down from may last year as I would prefer the accord to be wider with more contrasts. 

Still available from Sai Handicrafts at only £2.00 for approx 20gms. A genuine bargain. 

Date: Feb 2026   Score: 44

First review

Sweet, sultry, musky, woody. Yummy. The Asian agarwood (oudh) incense I've had hasn't yet approached the richness and depth of Middle-Eastern or Indian versions of oudh. Asian oudh is generally minimalist and dry, even rough. Middle-Eastern and Indian tends to be soft and warm like velvet with a delicious sexiness. I am not entirely certain of the reasons for this difference, but I can speculate, and others can speculate. Powdered wood is preferred in Asia (usually Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam), while oils are preferred in India and the Middle-East - and oils are rich and intense.  Heady incense is preferred in India and the Middle-East. Restraint is preferred in Asia (well, traditionally in Japan - though the most commercially successful incenses sold in Japan in modern times are incenses made in India). Synthetics are more widely accepted in India (and synthetics can deliver the essential character of a fragrance as a reasonable cost), while in Asia there is a greater focus on natural - which puts financial pressure on the incense maker, which can only be realistically resolved by a high retail price or by using cheaper natural ingredients, such as powdered agarwood which has little fragrance. Other speculations are available from your local store. 

Sai Handicrafts is based in the Home Counties of England, and is owned by Pinkesh Parikh. He sells at festivals during the season, and at Hitchin Market in Hertfordshire the rest of the time. He also has a website, Sai Handicrafts, where all the Indian goods he imports - bells, hangings, and crystals as well as incense, can be bought. Pinkesh told me he made the incense himself, but I suspect that was just a tease, because the style, quality, and price of the incense he sells is very reminiscent of incense made and sold in the holy city of Vrindavan in northern India, such as by Vrindavan Bazaar and Rasbihari Lal & Sons. If you're in the UK, buying from Sai Handicrafts is going to be quicker, cheaper, and easier than buying from a trader in Vrindavan. I am not 100% certain all the incense is made in Vrindavan, but it is very similar. I will sit down and do a side by side comparison one day. For now, it is just a comment that the incense is similar, and worth exploring if you like Vrindavan incense. 

The scent on the stick is earthy - rich, damp soil touched with barnyard and infused with sandalwood and dark magic. Sinister and compelling and dangerously attractive. The scent on the burn echoes that on the stick though with sultry sweetness and wisps of florals and honey. This is a gorgeous incense - cheap as chips and easily available in the UK.  There's no gamble involved in trying this out, and the potential is for a huge reward if you like hand-rolled artisanal incense rich with oils.  

Available from Sai Handicrafts at £2.00 for approx 20gms. Only ships in the UK. 

Date: May 2025    Score: 46

***

Sai Handicrafts

The best oudh incense

Sai Handicrafts Woods

 

Sai Handicrafts UK is run by Pinkesh and Bindu Parikh in Hertfordshire / Bedfordshire. Pinkesh has a regular stall in Hitchin Markat where he sells Indian goods and incense. The incense is branded with the company name, Sai handicrafts. I'd first encountered Pinkesh at Oxford, and bought a couple of his incenses, and was delighted with them. I later got in touch with him to find out more, such as who made the incense. He told me that he made the incense, so I went over to Hitchin Market to meet, and learn more about this unusual, possibly unique, incense production in the Home Counties of England. Pinkesh is a lovely man. Warm and friendly. Sadly he was a little reluctant to provide details about the incense production, and evaded all questions, so unfortunately I cannot confirm that Sai Handicrafts incense is made in the UK. Indeed, I find a similarity to the incense that is sold by Vrindavan Bazaar, though I've not yet had the heart to do a side by side comparison. 

This is a perfumed masala style incense - a soft black paste covered with a thin brown powder, and the stick has a pleasant volatile fragrance - sweet, woody, floral, creamy though with acidic spots. It is a well made stick, burning slowly and evenly, and dispersing the fragrance quite firmly, touching on heady. The fragrance on the burn is certainly woodsy with elements of cedar, sandalwood, and agarwood, but not being distinctly any one of these. There is an attractive almost candy sweetness, which is always going to appeal to me, and some floral notes that tend not to be my thing, but work well here. Indeed the scents form an attractive and balanced whole which is not just pleasing but also spiritually uplifting.  I really like this. If I knew for certain this was actually made in Bedford I would be very excited. That such great incense was being made here would be very exciting. But I suspect this is being made in Uttar Pradesh in northern India. That doesn't make the incense any less delightful, but it does make it less interesting to me. 

Available from Sai Handicrafts at £2.00 for approx 20gms. 

Date: May 2025    Score: 40

***

Sai Handicrafts

Vrindavan Bazaar Parijata

 

Bought at £1 for 20gms as part of an online purchase from Vrindavan Bazaar, a devotional shop in the holy city of Vrindavan in northern India. My packet has a hand-written label which says "Special Parijat", but I ordered the Parijata, my delivery order confirms Parijata, and the shop doesn't appear to sell a Special Parijat, so I am reasonably confident that what I've got is the Parijata. Parijata (or Parijatha) is a night-scented jasmine - I've reviewed two previously: Aravinda's Parijata, and Goloka Nature's Parijatha. I liked the masala based Goloka more than the basic perfumed-charcoal Aravinda. Natch - but, here's the rub. This is a masala style incense but sold as cheap as an everyday perfumed-charcoal incense. Indeed, the Vrindavan Bazaar incense I've just reviewed, Prabhupada, was a machine-extruded perfumed-charcoal incense sold at the same price as this. Sometimes (well, most of the time to be honest guv) I don't understand how the Indian incense industry works. I'm OK with perfumed-charcoal incense - indeed, if the scent is well blended I can really enjoy a perfumed-charcoal incense. But my assumption is that people are going for the perfumed incense over the masala because it is quicker, easier, and cheaper to make, and therefore is sold at a lower price for a budget-minded audience. But, I suppose, there is also a direct simplicity about perfumed-charcoal which is part of the appeal. For a while I was quite positive toward the flexibility in scent range of perfumed-charcoal. That I found there were a greater number of scents to select from, and many of the scents were quite modern - not just another Rose, Patchouli, Jasmine, Sandalwood, etc, yawn. And I suppose I still have that thought tucked away in my back pocket; though I have always actually preferred the overall quality of masala style incense. Well, in a general sweeping remark sort of way. There are certainly plenty of individual masala style incenses I've loathed, and plenty of perfumed incenses I've swooned over. But in general, the sky is blue for masala, and a bit cloudy for perfumed. Anyway. This is the third night-scented jasmine incense I've reviewed, and the way things are going, this is going to be rated my favourite. Masala rules OK. 

Scent on the stick is tingly sweet and floral with caramel and Biscoff  touches. There's fascinating faecal spots which add to the interest. Ooh. It's a dirty, seductive invite. Floating deliciously between feminine and masculine. Oh gawd it's so naughty!  

The scent on the burn is intensely floral, but not in a sickly or heady way. It's a light floaty floral - very feminine and summery, but held in place by masculine, woody, earthy, autumnal notes like muddy boots tied to drifting floral petals by their laces. This is damn good stuff. I could bathe in this for ever.....

Nice one. 

Date: May 2025   Score: 41

***

   

Vrindavan Bazaar

Best jasmine incense

Reviewed in Dubai

Vrindavan Bazaar Prabhupada

 

Second review - scroll down for earlier

I ordered Prabhupada from Vrindavan Bazaar earlier this year, and what they sent me, in a bag handwritten with the name (see below) was machine-extruded charcoal paste sticks without a melnoorva/masala coating. Brief Chemistry did the same thing, though what he received was a hand-rolled charcoal paste covered in the fragrant brown wood powder called melnoorva/masala. It looks like a standard masala stick. 

The scent on the brown stick  is woody and floral, though also with some vague chemical/rubber notes. The fragrance on the black stick is sweet, somewhat volatile and chemical, with a floral note that inclines toward violets on this visit (previously I felt it was rose - and, yes, I can see that again now). The fragrance on the sticks is distinctly different. The difference in appearance could be down to different production methods, but the scent on the stick is not similar.  

When lighting up the brown stick, the flame is small, with faint grey smoke. The black stick had a slightly larger flame, and produced a significant though not huge amount of black smoke. Both sticks use charcoal as the combustible, so the black smoke will likely be coming from a chemical additive, such as DEP. 

The scent on the burn of the brown stick is soft, woody, fruity, floral. It's a gentle, laid back fragrance, quite fresh and pleasant. The scent on the burn of the black stick is a little bolder and sweeter, and with a distinct fruit note. I keep looking for the similarity in fragrance, and it is possible there is one, but is altered by the production methods. But what I am perceiving is two very different scents. The scent on the black scent is moderately pleasant - sweet, some what bright and fruity, with floral notes which the more the stick burns the more for me it inclines toward rose, but the overall experience is entwinned with soft grey smoke tones. The brown stick is clearer and purer, with a pleasant, albeit vague and kind of generic masala, fragrance. As it burns I become more aware of the sweetness, and some of the sandalwood notes drift away. There are some soft fruit tones, and the top notes are sweet floral, inclining toward rose. 

Ho hum. The scents are very different, though they contain similar elements. It is not impossible that they both have been dipped in the same perfume solution, but that the brown stick has some frankincense in the paste, and some sandalwood in the masala powder, and so the scent profile is altered and improved. Either that, or one or other of the sticks is not Prabhupada, and either Brief Chemistry or myself has been sent a substitute. Perhaps deliberately, or perhaps by accident. Either way, the brown stick is the better experience of the two. It's a decent stick. 


Date: Aug 2025   Score: 33

First review

This is part of a bundle of incense I bought from Vrindavan Bazaar last year. £1 for 20gms. Cheap as chips, though dubious quality. Named after the founder of the International Krishna Movement, Swami Prabhupada, this is a machine-extruded perfume-dipped incense. Not quite as delightful as the old Spiritual Sky that followers of Prabhupada's Krishna Movement used to sell, but, hey, it only cost £1 for 20gms. And, after all, you get what you pay for.... ;-)

Aroma on the stick is chemical toilet cleaner with some synthetic rose scent thrown in to make it less offensive. Scent on the burn is vague, smoky, with some drift toward rose, but is largely just generally sweet and floral. It's not great, but it's not appalling, and - good grief - it's only £1 for 20gms. What can you expect for that? After all, you get what you pay for...

I can't say I dislike this. Regardless of price, this is a lower end but reasonably acceptable everyday perfumed-charcoal room-freshener incense. And, actually, it's OK for the price. After all, you get what you pay for... 

Date: May 2025   Score: 24

***

   

Vrindavan Bazaar

Vrindavan Bazaar

 

I've got incense from three different suppliers in the holy city of Vrindavan, India, and the incenses are pretty similar. It is possible they are all getting incense from the same single producer, or - given the batch variance - it is more likely that it comes from a variety of  white label incense houses across India, though predominantly Pune and Mumbai. 

Vrindavan Bazaar (Hare Krsna Exports LLC, House No. 351, Chaitanya Vihar, Vrindavan); Hare Krishna Das (Hare Krishna Emporium, Loi Bazaar, Vrindavan); and Rasbihari Lal & Sons (Rasbihari Lal & Sons, Loi Bazar, Vrindaban). There is a fourth supplier called Vrindavan Bazar, which has a name and logo almost exactly the same as Vrindavan Bazaar, but gives no address, and they only deliver within India. 

Incense production in India can be confusing. There are a number of outlets which give the impression they are the producer when they are just the retailer. Rasbihari Lal is mainly a religious bookshop, though they do also sell incense. But I see no evidence of them being a producer. This is kind of similar to Pushkar incense, where there are three outlets for locally produced incense, none of whom appear to make the incense themselves, and the incense is clearly made under the control of a single incense house. For a while I wondered if the incense sold by Rasbihari Lal was made by Haridas Madhavdas Sugandhi (HMS) in Pune because some of the incense has similarities with what HMS make. But that is true of other incense makers in Pune. And some of the sticks sold in Vrindavan are similar to incense sold by white label incense houses in Mumbai. 

Its curious that we (me in particular) chase after a holy grail that perhaps doesn't exist: this mythical artisan incense maker sitting cross legged making sublime incense. Perhaps this ideal of the sublime master creator is just in our heads. It's actually not one person, but thousands, all across India. In Pune, in Mumbai, in Bangalore. Everywhere. And it's a shared collective. The shared knowledge of one hundred years of rolling charcoal paste around a bamboo stick. The shared knowledge of fifty years blending a floral scent with a sandalwood scent to make Nag Champa. Each scent that is made - be it Nag Champa or any of its hundreds of variations, is the result of work and development by other incense makers. I recently burned Jeomra's Frankincense & Rose, and was interested to note that this incense, made by a true creative artisan in Germany, is based on traditional masala incense ideas from India, combined with modern perfumed-masala ideas, and the developing interest in resin-on-a-stick incense from the Americas. There are the incense ideas from four continents in that one incense stick. 

Reviews

   

Vrindavan Bazaar Vrindavan Flora (M)
Oct 2025 - Score: 43

Vrindavan Bazaar Parijata (PM)
May 2025 - Score: 41

   

Vrindavan Bazaar Kesar Chandan (M)
Dec 2025 - Score: 41

  

Vrindavan Bazaar Blue Lotus? (M)
Feb 2026 - Score: 40

Vrindavan Bazaar Loban (PM)
Jun 2025 - Score: 37

   

Vrindavan Bazaar Agarwood (PM)
Jun 2025 - Score: 37

  

Vrindavan Bazaar Mayapur (M)
Jul 2025 - Score: 35

Vrindavan Bazaar Sandal Supreme (PM)
Oct 2025 - Score: 34

Vrindavan Bazaar Prabhupada (P / M)
Aug 2025 - Score: 33↑ 

Vrindavan Bazaar Woods (PM)
Jun 2025 - Score: 33

  

Vrindavan Bazaar Temple Grade Patchouli (PM)
Apr 2014 - Score: 33

   

Vrindavan Bazaar Tulsi (PM)
Jun 2025 - Score: 33

Vrindavan Bazaar Night Queen (PM)
Oct 2025 - Score: 33

  

Vrindavan Bazaar Lavender Natural (P)
Nov 2025 - Score: 31

Vrindavan Bazaar Jasmine (P)
Nov 2025 - Score: 26

Vrindavan Bazaar Patchouli (PM)
Nov 2025 - Score: 24

Reviews: 16
Top score: 43
Bottom score: 24
Average: 35

***

Retailers of Distinction

(HMS) Prasad Celestial Frankincense

 

Single stick sample of Celestial Frankincense from the Prasad Celestial Assorted pack made by Haridas Madhavdas Sugandhi of Pune, India (HMS), and sold by Prasad Gifts in the USA. 

The scent on the stick has the familiar volatility of a perfumed incense (dipped, poured, or sprayed; whichever way - liquid scent added to the outside of the stick), though softer, warmer, and sweeter than others in the Assorted pack that I've tried so far. Musky and quite delicious. More my sort of scent than florals. The icing sugar coldness of the volatility does eventually intrude. But, to be fair, the scent on the stick is just for short term immediate appeal. The main purpose of an incense stick is the fragrance when it is lit. Indeed, many traditional masala incenses (rather than the modern perfumed-masala incenses), especially those which use wood powder as the combustible (the wood powder when dried seems to lock in the scent), have little to no scent on the stick. I understand the commercial intent behind perfuming the outside of a masala stick, and also I do appreciate it - it's nice to open a pack and get that welcome fragrance; but the important and essential part of incense is the fragrance on the burn. 

This Celestial Frankincense has a gentle and musky scent on the burn, echoing that of the scent on the stick, but without the icing sugar coldness and volatility, and with an added smoky element which adds to the interest. I could be convinced that there is a frankincense character here, but there isn't much, and if it wasn't named Celestial Frankincense I wouldn't be thinking in that direction. There is some awareness of the infamous HMS vanilla, though not much. And, as with the frankincense, I'm not sure I'd be finding it if I wasn't looking for it. On the whole this is an attractive room freshener incense. I'd be OK with burning this in the house, but I'm not sure there's enough going on here to interest or attract me into buying it again. 

$2.20 for 10g/10sticks from Prasad Gifts or Exotic Incense.

Date: May 2025    Score: 28

***

Haridas Madhavdas Sugandhi

Discussed on Reddit

Frankincense

Prasad Brand Incense