On a whim, I bought a few packs of
Laughing Buddhaa incense from
The Incense Man while I was on that site buying Padmini Pakeezah, which I'm informed is the source for the excellent
Stamford Pakeezah. The price - £5.99 for 20 sticks - is not cheap, but I was curious. I'm now looking around for information, but I'm not finding much about them on the internet. They don't give an address on the packet, nor on their website, just the words "Dubai - Mumbai". I did a Google maps search for Laughing Buddhaa in Dubai, and I can see there is
a shop in Dubai with the same name, and the same logo. It seems to be a "
high-end" New Age shop that sells healing crystals and incense. It appears to me that the incense isn't made in Dubai, so I search for a Laughing Buddhaa in Mumbai. There are several Laughing Buddha with one "a", but nothing spelled with two "a"s. So my assumption is that the incense is made by one of the many white label incense houses in Mumbai, such as
Melting Moments,
Suchatas,
Kamicka, and the massive
Singapuraship, who work with
Satya and
Phool, and can make over 13 million sticks a day. I emailed to the address on the pack, but that bounced back as address unknown. So I used the "contact us" form on the shop's website, and asked if they could provide me with more details about the company and the incense they sell. After a month there is still no response. So, yeah, this is highly likely to be run-of-the-mill white label Mumbai incense sold for a high price in Dubai, and for some reason then imported by The Incense Man.
The pack design is the same for all the fragrances - all that is different is the name and the decoration colouring. This is the most common approach used by
own brand traders, as it is low cost, low effort and commitment, and pushes the trader's own brand. The design and colours are simple and unimaginative.
The sticks are quite plain. Some light brown wood paste has been hand rolled onto plain bamboo splints. There is a very mild soapy scent on the sticks, with some very faint wood and resin notes; there's an attractive delicate sherbet sweetness, some mint, and a curious sense of fresh air. So far there is little here that is encouraging, though the low level of scent on the sticks does suggest that this is proper
masala, where the fragrance is put into the paste before rolling, rather than added afterwards. Proper traditional masala tends to be designed more for the burn fragrance rather than the fleeting charm of the fragrance on the stick.
Once lit up there is a distinct and pure frankincense fragrance, combined with white sandalwood, and later some twigginess. It is an attractive woody and resinous scent, though doesn't travel far from its white woody resin heart. There's perhaps some pepper and a touch of nettles, but on the whole it treads water. It's a nice spot to be in; though after treading water in the same spot it kind of stirs up some mud, and the earlier cool and pleasant clarity starts to shift to something a little murky - a little bit of burning wood.
Despite my hesitation about the background to this incense, I find I like it. There's a blend of white wood (partly fragrantly sweet sandalwood, though also partly ill-defined garden bonfire wood) with plain frankincense. It mostly works well. I find that the fragrance remains in the same area too much for my liking, with insufficient variety for my easily bored mind. But I can see how others would like that focus. I'm uncomfortable with some of the scratchy burn notes, but that could be partly to do with my terpenes sensitivity which has been playing up for about a month now. On the whole I find this a decent incense, which I suspect I would enjoy more with some summer breezes coming in through the open windows.
Date: Jan 2026 Score: 36
