Pushkar Temple / 50g / Amber Kasturi, Kohinoor, Opium, Ruhe Patchouli, Tulsi

January 30, 2024 at 8:50 am (Amber, Basil / Tulasi / Tulsi, Incense, India, Kasturi (Musk), Mike, Opium, Patchouli, Pushkar Temple Incense)

Pushkar Temple / 100g 1 of 3
Pushkar Temple / 100g 2 of 3
Pushkar Temple / 100g 3 of 3
Pushkar Temple / 50g 1 of 6
Pushkar Temple / 50g 2 of 6
Pushkar Temple / 50g 3 of 6

This is the fourth group of six in the Pushkar Temple 50g series of incenses and is the first of three miscellaneous categories, although in this group at least some of the names hint at what the incenses are aiming for.

The first one up has the only actual identifiable musk (kasturi) in the catalog. I’ve said this before but I am not entirely convinced unless it comes from the company itself that they’re using animal musk or plant-based musk, and even then there are reasons for not drawing attention to it. I say this because real animal musk is likely at a high price point these days and plant-based musk is probably more common in incenses these days. With that said I’ll leave it at that, except to say that I do notice some importers who ensure their incenses don’t harm animals often don’t have as many musk incenses in their catalogs either. My experience with real animal musk, especially in quantity is it tends to leave the same kind of space that say a skunk spray or horse barn would, it’s the kind of scent that will play with the lizard brain a little and so if you’re not experiencing something like that in an incense I’d guess it’s probably plant-based musk or at least a very small amount of animal musk.

Kasturi musks are usually quite sweet and probably less animalic than say something like civet and so they’re used in perfumes, unfortunately too frequently (although less so with increasing ecological awareness/scarcity over the years). I think a good example of an actual kasturi musk might be the Kourindo Jyakourin Musk incense. It has that sweet note that verges noticeably animalic. Musk is supposedly in Absolute Bliss’ imported Forbidden Fruit, in the sense that it’s an incense that matches up with almost a dozen Vedic Vaani incenses, some of which are labeled Kasturi. I don’t sense much in the way of an animalic note in this incense, so it’s likely just a touch or it’s plant-based. Anyway, I ramble a bit to set up the context for the Pushkar Temple Amber Kasturi. This is a very nice incense, but I would guess right off this is likely a plant-based musk and/or used in small quantities because it doesn’t have much of a wallop to it. It is otherwise similar enough to other Amber musk mixes I have tried, almost all of which I enjoy immensely (add heena and it’s perfection). However, this doesn’t have a super well-defined musk or amber note, it’s more like a mix of the characteristics. So definitely nice, but not, say, on the level of Gokula’s Musk and Amber, this is a lot milder overall. Keep in mind, that exporters’ lack of willingness to identify musk in their incenses for the most part leaves us to guess a lot, but I do think animalic musks tend to hit really hard in incenses, and in a way are very unmistakable. No such wallop here.

Kohinoor may have well gone fine with the last two installments where the names of incenses tend to be more conceptual than revealing. It ended up here for no real reason. This is basically referring to one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, which really tells you nothing about the scent. It feels floral to me, but not obviously so, the oil is also sort of tangy with maybe a light touch of licorice. I’m not sure the balance works all that well, it feels somewhat astringent at times. Whatever floral is front facing escapes me largely because of all these extra subnotes. It reminds me a little of the Tulsi below in that there’s some unnamed herbal content in it as well. And tying all these things together is a kind of sweet, quasi-champa base as well. So it’s sort of like this big mix I don’t find working for me, but your mileage may vary.

The Pushkar Temple Opium is simply fabulous. It’s quite a bit different to the Madhavadas sourced Opium, although there are some similarities (the Madhavadas just off the top of my head is a bit more tart and oil rich). I can’t admit to having ever had the actual Opium experience but it’s a name also used as a perfume which probably complicates what it is supposed to smell like in some way (flower? drug? perfume?). Not to mention the mainstream Opium incenses that don’t do much more than irritate and provide headaches. But simply on the face of it, the Pushkar Temple version is a very attractive incense and maybe somewhat analogous to the Tuberose in that it has a similar base but the floral mix is just one of a kind and not anything I can compare to. The perfume here seems extremely multifaceted, with all sorts of things going on with it and it’s endlessly fascinating and interesting. The mix does smell like a perfume but its base is so tasteful that the overall effect is just marvelous, absolutely zero harsh floral notes. I’d definitely pick this one up, I’m not sure there’s anything quite like it that wouldn’t have faults along with it, it’s really one of the best floral incenses I’ve ever tried.

I almost lost Ruhe Patchouli in the pile, it sort of missed being in my first round of photos, but it seemed best placed here with the mostly descriptive, miscellaneous incenses. Like I mentioned in the previous installment that had a couple of “Ruhe” incenses, it’s difficult to tell if there’s any material reason that ties the three incenses together, but all of them seem like reasonable/quality takes on their main ingredient. I’ve talked a LOT about patchouli in recent installments and am probably running out of things to say about it, but this mix is still a little different from what I usually note as patchouli leaf or oil. It’s much more stylized with a feeling like there’s a perfume that overlies the patchouli scent. It means it’s a little sweeter than most patchoulis you’ll try and also a bit more regal and polished. Whether that’s a good thing probably depends on your taste. But here I think it mixes fairly well into an incense that’s just a little more than the rote stuff you normally find, it’s also probably one of the least earthiest patchoulis I’ve tried.

It’s probably near impossible to beat the Temple of Incense Tulsi, which as I mentioned in the review has been stylized into something sweeter and fruitier. Here I think the Pushkar Temple Tulsi is probably closer to the real thing but then that means you’re getting something of an herbal basil incense. I’m good with basil in a pesto or other types of cooking, but am pretty sure I don’t need an incense of it. Fortunately it’s not all of the way in that direction (not to mention Tulsi doesn’t smell a whole lot like the basil we use in cooking based on its incenses), the PT version is also sweetened up and feels a bit champa-esque, but ultimately there is definitely an herbal note in front. It is however a completely different incense to the TOI, the two really have little in common. This has some sort of minty subnotes to it and some level of mild spice to it that may come from the tulsi or the base, all of this sort of mixes up the final incense. I’m not bowled over by this, it it may just be a taste thing, it’s unlikely to be all that similar to anything you’ve tried before, so if you don’t mind an herbal sort of champa type, you might indeed go for this.

Two more installments to go, virtually all incenses with names that don’t really hint at the scent…

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Bhagwan Incense / Dragon’s Blood, Fragrant Amber, Lavender Bliss, Saffron Sandalwood, Spring Blossom + notes on other fragrances

November 25, 2023 at 9:28 am (Amber, Benzoin (Loban), Bhagwan Incense, Cherry, Dragon's Blood, Honey, India, Lavender, Mike, Musk, Opium, Pine / Pinon, Rose, Saffron, Sandalwood, Vanilla, Ylang Ylang)

The provenance of a few of this second quintet of incenses from Bhagwan Incense range from obviously Madhavadas-sourced to possibly. Just to reiterate in case you’re new or unfamiliar with Madhavdas, it is an Indian incense family and company that exports its incenses to a number of different companies across the world (it is possibly second to Satya I would imagine). It’s positive is wonderful top perfumes (some would be even described as premium), it’s negative is a very repetitive base made from vanilla, charcoal and sandalwood that tends to often outweigh its top notes and can become very fatiguing if used frequently (so like if you’re a guy who has had an incense blog since the 00s you may be a bit biased against it). Some of these with a Bhagwan label may have dialed down some of the base (or conversely upped the perfumes/oils) in a balanced way, but I’ve provided some notes on extra incenses that seemed definitively Madhavadas and how I think they fared. Both the Amber and the Lavender here in particular are likely to be familiar to those who have traveled through companies like Primo or Triloka, but they also feel a bit different, and it often can be hard to tell if it’s just the same incenses or new formulas attempting to create similar incenses. In these cases it might be best to consider them just part of classic incense “families,” variations, perhaps, but still attempting to attain the same goals.

Dragon’s Blood looks very much like the same stick (if a bit thinner and shorter) that used to be available in the Absolute Bliss catalog, a charcoal with some light red powdering, but it smells quite different to my nose. I’ve probably gone on record saying that dragon’s blood resin is probably too exciting of a name for the aroma you’re getting just from the resin, so I’m all for gussying it up with other things when it comes to sticks. And in the description, ylang ylang and vanilla are listed. It feels very possible for the base that this is a Madhavadas sourced incense, but in this case the oils on top have largely mitigated the vanilla, although not entirely. Now this doesn’t really scream to me as having a strong actual dragon’s blood oil or resin note on top but it does feel like there was an attempt to capture or maybe improve on it for an incense. It does feel a bit confused and maybe not entirely coherent, but that’s not at all to say it’s unpleasant. Maybe the ylang ylang is cutting into the spicier/hotter element you’d expect from a name like this, but ultimately I kind of dig the complexity of it, it almost feels like if you’re paying attention you’re sort of mentally running around trying to pick the combinations out. If you do like dragon’s blood I’d definitely take a shot at it.

The Fragrant Amber is the common red stick variation that I have seen for decades in various places and which tends to show up in more mainstream lines (I used to contrast this with the so-called “Royal Amber” which was a black charcoal and had a more powdery scent). I do seem to remember the “reds” being a bit more (dry) masala-like, this one seems to be a charcoal stick with some red powder, but it is of a definitely deeper red color that wouldn’t be matched up with the pinker variations that are usually rose or some other floral (like the Spring Blossom at the end of this article). The description is “amber wood with notes of musk and vanilla, honey and benzoin.” I’d keep in mind that amber is often a thing made from other things (thus the honey and benzoin) and amber wood is usually a perfume mix as opposed to a wood, but with those things in mind it’s probably not an inaccurate description. The vanilla, of course, does imply a Madhavadas provenance, although like the Dragon’s Blood, the Fragrant Amber feels new to my nose and not a repeat of something ORS has reviewed previously. But it also doesn’t smell like the red ambers I remember, it’s formulated both similarly and differently and yet ends up in roughly the same space. All of the incenses in this lineage, while often not the most premium scents, are still aromas I enjoy and appreciate and you do find your way through the combination to something you might take away as being an “amber” in the aromatic sense, so I’m glad to see this has not been lost. Frankincense & Amber, however, is straight up Madhavadas in the sense that whatever is on top doesn’t outweigh the base and it’s very difficult to pick out both ingredients in what ends up being a sort of confusing conglomerate. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a little bit of both in there, but it hardly behooves one to use, supposedly, high grade ingredients if they aren’t overpowering this sort of base. And once again the red color at the picture on the Bhagavan site isn’t particularly strong in my samples, so there may be variations depending on the amount of dusting lost.

In a similar way much of the same can be said for Lavender Bliss, except in recent years we’ve seen what I’d call vedic lavenders that largely leave incenses like this one superfluous. Lavender is just one of those herbs that can present quite different from one incense to another, but this incense actually doesn’t strike me as being all that on the nose. It’s possible that there just isn’t enough perfume to get above what smells like the usual Madhavadas base and so it’s hard to accept this as a lavender-fronted incense. It reminds me very much of the last time I tried the Triloka Lavender. There was a similar issue with a Madhavadas-sourced Lemongrass, but I was told there was a d decision was made by Bhagwan not to carry it. I imagine this was a bit of disappointment as the fresh stick actually had a really wonderful lemongrass top note, but it was almost completely submerged in the burn. The Orange Blossom has similar issues in that gentle oils fronting a powerful base doesn’t usually work out too well, but at least in this case the oil is detectable in the burn. I’ve occasionally seen incenses that marry orange with vanilla and end up smelling like an orange creme popsicle, but that doesn’t happen here. On the other hand, sometimes the Madhavadas incense is exactly the one you want to show up and Bhagwan definitely carry their really excellent Opium. I’ve previously reviewed a similar batch here and my initial impression was that they were both fairly identical. I would have compared them but I think my PI stock will likely have lost some of the oil strength two years later, so it wouldn’t be accurate or fair to do so. Needless to say whoever you source this one from, it’s highly recommended (and cheers to the reader who sent me samples of this a while back!). I don’t want anyone to forget that Madhavadas-sourced incenses can be wonderful too.

Since most of the incenses in this installment are a bit harder to determine if they are Madhavadas-sourced, my compass is basically to review those that I haven’t before and point to where I have. It’s difficult to tell if Saffron Sandalwood is Madhavadas sourced or from another company (there’s evidence that could go either way). Although I’ve reviewed both Pure Incense Sandalwood and Saffron, I don’t appear to have reviewed an incense with the ingredients together. While I am not sure that the sandalwood in this is really distinctive (it feels like it just falls short of this), it does mix nicely with the base and whatever is being used as the saffron, but there’s quite a bit more going on here. Saffron sandalwood mixes are often yellow-green colored masalas and don’t tend to be as sweet as this one, so this is at least a new variation to my nose. It’s almost like this has a bit of cookie spice in the middle you wouldn’t expect, a spice that floats pretty prominently on top. You would almost expect anything cookie to have the ubiquitous vanilla as well, and although I can feel it in there somewhere, it doesn’t really come across like it usually does in the Madhavadas stable. I should also mention here that the red coloring in my picture is not on the samples I received, similar to the two above, so based on my photo it could be a bit of where the light is. Ultimately this is quite nice even if it’s not the perfect match to the name, there’s a full-bodied feel to this that speaks of some strength in the oils. It’s one of those incenses that I might even need longer stock just to see how I fall with it later as I definitely enjoy it, while feeling somewhat hesitant to fully commit to a recommendation if that makes sense. You’d certainly want to sample it if the ingredients are those you gravitate towards.

There are infinite variations of the rose/floral, pink colored sticks that show up in numerous catalogs and so I wouldn’t even make a guess to the provenance of Spring Blossom except to say it fits nicely in this style. Part of me starts to think of 3D graphs where you can measure and compare the intensity of rose, cherry, bubble gum, and other aspects of sticks like this. So it’s not hard to recommend incenses in this range but if you’re really familiar with them and have many variations than it might be too close to what you already know. Like for me, I think of Bappa Morya (it’s probably easily and safe to say this is a Vedic Vaani mainstay, but it shows up in a lot more than one place in their catalog) as a favorite in this style, but I would think favorites would vary from person to person depending on whether you like the mix. So Spring Blossom? Well, this one is definitely surprisingly high with an actual gorgeous rose note and maybe the cherry is a little farther down in the bouquet. The description also gives musk, pine and vanilla and they’re all much more noticeable than in other pink sticks I’ve tried, giving this a bit of extra breadth. So I think most will find this to be a really beautiful incense and certainly if you’ve never tried one of these pink sticks it’s easy to recommend this one.

So in the next installment I will be moving to Eugene’s other line at goodincense.eu. Unlike the Bhagwan line, these come in wrappers, but I wouldn’t take that to be a corresponding drop in incense quality at all, there’s still quite a few goodies to be found, some of which appear to have the same provenance as the wonderful Balsamic Amber in the previous installment. Until then, I hope everyone who had one had a good Thanksgiving!

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Pure Incense / Connoisseur Blue Lotus & Musk, Connoisseur Musk De Luxe, Vintage Catuhsama Oud Musk, Connoisseur Opium Intense

November 8, 2021 at 9:04 am (Incense, India, Lotus, Mike, Musk, Opium, Pure-Incense)

In this second, recent, installment of Pure Incense reviews, I’ve sorted this group essentially into the musk category, even if the Oud Musk is probably more of an oud with musk touches and the Opium may or may not have it at all, but the latter does seem to have some real similarities to the Musk De Luxe stick both in color and perhaps more partially in scent. Second, two of these incenses, the first and last listed, were part of the samples a kind reader sent to me some months to check out (the third sample is currently out of stock, so I did not get to grab that one but certainly would have) so this is a group I like a lot. In many ways when you’re really looking into ouds and sandalwoods and so forth it can be a breath of fresh air to move to incenses that tend to differ from more or less any other creator’s output and are great without needing any woods to complete things.

The Connoisseur Blue Lotus and Musk, unsurprisingly, is essentially just a slight variation on the Connoisseur Blue Lotus. As most Pure Incense appreciators know the Blue Lotus is certainly one of the line’s most original and dependable aromas and it ranges across the entire Pure Incense spectrum, although for my nose, I prefer to have the quality of the perfume cranked up as much as possible, as it is on this stick. Lotus oils vary so much in incense that it can be fairly difficult to really describe what a lotus scent actually smells like other than the flower itself, but in the Pure Incense Blue Lotus incenses, it has always been something of a powdery, gentle and distinct floral scent that is so unlike any other lotus incense that it’s an essential stop for increasing the variety of your scent collection. It is, for example, completely different than the lotus incenses in the Absolute Bliss/Happy Hari/Temple of Incense range, and as far as I know I can’t think of any other line producing the quality of either manufacturer that’s still in business. The musk added here seems to be very slight in comparison to the main Blue Lotus incense, it’s certainly tangible and perhaps moves this into a different kind of sweet territory but it doesn’t have the power that the musk does in the De Luxe below. But for my nose after retrying the regular Connoisseur Blue Lotus recently, it feels like this is of slightly higher quality overall and it reminds me more of the first time I tried and reviewed it than the most recent box I tried. And yes here, the vanilla of the base I think really compliments the perfume. It’s a really friendly and wonderful incense.

The Connoisseur Musk De Luxe is also the type of aroma I think is relatively uncommon and could be quite novel to readers’ noses. In a lot of ways it’s a similar issue to lotus perfumes, musks can vary a lot and of course they can also be sourced from animal or plant sources. Often when it is not expressly stated that it’s a plant-sourced musk, it’s because it isn’t, but in this case if you pop on over to the Pure Incense Nepal Musk page, you will see the language affirming that Pure Incense musks are plant based. Anyway this brick red color stick is kind of a sour-sweet marvel that is really an aroma of its own. The vanilla feels a bit more dialed back here compared to many Pure Incense sticks, which I feel was a good move (or maybe the musk obscures it) and the musk has a very pretty center note that really sells it. I like its tanginess, the almost definitive sweet note and just the overall power of the stick. In fact this is often the case in the Pure Incenses that have the perfumes dialed up. It is not at all the kind of refined musk scent you’d see in, say, a Kourindo incense which would have the sweet center note up more in front.

The Vintage Catuhsama Oud Musk is described as “two parts of musk, four parts of sandalwood, three parts of aguru or saffron and one part of camphor, when mixed together, form catuḥsama.” I would still probably class this closer to the ouds in the previous installment however this has a much mellower wood sort of scent which I would assume is due to the dialed up presence of the sandalwood. The vanilla in the base is also pretty noticeable here, partially because it tends to come out a bit more when there’s more sandalwood oil in the mix. For an oud scent this is probably closest to the Egyptian Oud from the previous installment in that it has a healthy bit of spice to it as well, not to mention there are no really overtly strong agarwood notes in this (although definitely enough to recognize its oudness). It feels a bit more of a balance of a number of aspects than any one thing. I remember some musk sandalwood masalas from the past that were kind of roughly in this area, so if you remember those, think of what that would be like with a spike of oud in the middle somewhere and you’d be fairly close.

Finally, the other sample that I received prior to this order, the Connoisseur Opium Intense. In my experience Opium in an incense tends to be more related to the perfume with that name than the poppies or the smell of opium itself. However here the scent comes from opium essential oils which “have been used to create a masterful wondrous scent that is like a rich sultry Ambery oriental woody fragrance with dark exotic notes.” I like that description, can definitely get the amber out of it and overall I just like how this is another great scent that doesn’t really smell like any other, and for sure it’s better than any opium perfume on charcoal stick I have seen offered. But naturally I can’t really side by side this with the real thing nor do I have any valid memory or what that might be like, and if I did I’d still wager this is probably a lot prettier. And you really gotta love the end of the description: “Lose yourself in dreams of other realms far away from the concrete and iron civilisation all around us….to a place with a variety of trees and bushes and flowers and birds and bees and swans and parrots and all manner of colourful flowers and scent and birds and creatures!” Wheeeee!

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