2x “Buddha” in comparison
The scents are as different as the packaging designs.
Goloka – The Büddhã; (so is the spelling on the package. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to read, my scanner performs poorly with foil printing.) smells very promising raw. It’s a soapy, dry smell that makes me think of white flowers and has a certain green freshness.
I found them a bit disappointing at first because they felt quite generic.
Things got better on the second try, at least somewhat. The first thing I smell is wood smoke. Sandalwood, I suspect, but not the intoxicating sweet kind. The profile is quite dark overall and even though it opens up a bit and becomes warmer over time, it remains rather flat and base-heavy. (In my head, the smell is shaped like a flat trapezoid.) It’s aromatic in a perhaps herbaceous way and, despite its dark spiciness, has something cool about it. For that matter, they remind me of the same brand’s Oud. However, they miss their volume. The Buddha – an “Oud light”?
They are priced at €1.65 for 15g – containing about 12 sticks, so around 14ct per stick. Their burning time is given as 35–45 minutes. They are very thin.
Rating: 2.7
Vijayshree – Golden Buddha are a little cheaper: €1.45 for 15g, but here there are ~15 sticks, which equals 10ct per stick. Burning time: approx. 30–40 minutes.
They give off an interesting sandalwood soap scent right out of the package. When lit, the soapy note disappears, and they become soft, somewhat spicy and wonderfully balsamic, sweet and creamy, with the high-pitched top note that I find typical of sandalwood, which in this case is not as pungent as, for example, Balaji – Chandan. *
Over time, I occasionally smell a hint of soap, but I don’t find it upsetting at all. As sweet as they are, I suspect they contain a good amount of benzoin.
I really like these incense sticks. Rating: 3.9
* I write this with reservations. I have been comparing Golden Buddha with Vijayshree – Golden Nag Chandan and Goloka – Premium Chandan for the last few days, and it was a truly remarkable experience. Both smell entirely different when directly compared to Golden Buddha then to how I’ve experienced before, and to a shocking degree. So far, I have liked to compare the two Chandans and reference each other – in the sense of: Goloka Chandan is sweeter and softer than Nag Chandan, while Nag Chandan is less sweet than Goloka, has a darker character and a certain, earthy patchouli note. However, both have the typical sharp sandalwood sweetness… The thing is: compared to Golden Buddha, I don’t find either of them to be particularly sweet. In Nag Chandan I found an entirely new aspect that I would describe as musky. (Perhaps it wasn’t the case with Goloka Chandan because I haven’t known them for that long.) So it remains to be seen, to what extent this statement holds up in direct comparison.