Rajpal – White Oudh
My friend Silver from India sent me some samples from Rajpal, including these White Oudh.
On Rajpal‘s website, White Oudh can be found in the Premium Natural Masala category. Sales are via Amazon.in. 50g are sold for ₹225, or 250g for ₹950; that’s converted approx. €2.10 or €8.70 respectively.
Silver had mistakenly labelled White Oudh as ‘White Lotus’, as the packaging shows a lotus flower. My first impressions and according notes were consequently confused. XD
The fact that I couldn’t find a ‘White Lotus’ on Rajpal’s shop wasn’t all too unusual or surprising, as it happens quite often that varieties are discontinued or simply can’t be found on a maker’s website.
A brief, quite amusing conversation finally cleared up the misunderstanding.
The raw scent of White Oudh is deep and earthy, interwoven with a pungent freshness that feels alcohol-like volatile and reminds me of shoe polish.
The sticks are potent, and so it works better for me to let them burn in an adjacent room and have their fragrance waft to me through the open door, along with a breeze of fresh air from outside.
Part of the freshness also comes through when burning but loses its pungent character in the process. Through the combination with the earthiness, the fragrance reminds me quite a bit of khus (vetiver) fragrances. Where the smoke is still a little too concentrated, a smell arises that makes me think of shoe polish again. Occasionally, I also find a leathery note.
The foundation of the composition is a dark, unmistakable oudh note; deep, slightly spicy, balsamic and equipped with only minimal sweetness. The strongly woody fragrance feels soft in a powdery-dry way and has a certain elegance about it.
I’m inclined to describe the smell as masculine because you can find it in many men’s fragrances; but White Oudh aren’t perfumey or reminiscent of cologne.
I’ve always burnt the thick, potent sticks in several sessions, leaving the stick in the holder, and I’ve found that in the process they lost the solvent-like shoe polish smell. The fragrance of the ‘aired-out’ sticks was rounder and more pleasant; positive aspects seemed to move more into the foreground. The softness of the fragrance in particular was notably clearer than with a stick fresh from the pouch.
White Oudh are potent but elegant incense sticks of the oudh genre; well suited for people who prefer a less sweet fragrance that doesn’t have the frequently encountered cologne smell.
The overall character of these sticks reminds me of my first encounters with oudh incense sticks out of the Bhagwan range. I don’t have any of these sticks left to compare, but when I read my old review of Oudh Masala, I found some interesting parallels.
By chance, Redditor u/Brief_Chemistry932 posted his order from Rajpal on r/Incense on the same day I drafted this review, and he also wrote about White Oudh. He mentions a similarity to a variety sold by Vedic Vaani.
It’s worth noting that Rajpal have changed the box design of the variety. But the Rajpal website still shows the old packaging.