Olfactory Rescue Service

So recently I did a sweep through my Tibetan incenses. It’s a chance to get a little more experience with them and change some impressions for the better. But as I went through everything, I realized I couldn’t find the Dirapuk Monastery Special Incense and it took me a little while to realize that it may have been this unprotected roll that I had put in a plastic wrapper that didn’t really protect it. I believe I had found the remainder of the larger fragments in a different tube after thinking it was something else and then remembered everything else had ended up in little pieces due to the fragility. But what this really did for me is make me realize that my previous review didn’t seem to be accurate. I can maybe only attribute this to a mix up that occurs with the prevalence of Tibetans starting with a D…Drepung, Drigung, Dhe-Tsang, Dirapuk and others. So, this is basically an update. However…

In the meantime incense-traditions.ca had started to offer a version with a cardboard tube (or actually maybe they always had and I had just come across it via search, because it’s not listed on their main page of Tibetan monastery incenses), so I reordered it. It absolutely does need this sort of protection. I found that what I was smelling here was really nothing like I had written about. I compared this newly ordered incense to the fragments and felt they were close, however I will note that the sticks are thicker now, so perhaps there was a commensurate adjustment for the fragility as well. This wasn’t really incense similar to the Holy Land tradition, it did not have that incense’s wilder characteristics or its saltiness and was a lot closer to an evergreen woodiness, but a woodiness with an intriguing mix of spices and herbs. A lot of this isn’t listed with the given ingredients: borneol, cinnamon, red and white sandalwood. The cinnamon you can definitely detect but the borneol feels so mixed in you mostly detect it in relationship to what else is going on. That would be the sharper edge over the top with the almost cookie/baking like spice more the sweetness in the middle. It does have a huge hit of musk but it’s neither the more animal like take on Holy Land or the sweeter more perfume like take. Perhaps like the borneol, the musk is more involved in giving some dimension to the other ingredients. Overall it’s a very strange mix, it feels less like it comes together as whole than it has a number of different aspects that impart an odd complexity to it. But it is undeniably fascinating.