MAKER

Stupa Incense

Nagarjung, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

In the Himalaya, incense is not decoration. It is lit at the household shrine at dawn, carried through temples and monasteries, and burned during meditation — an ordinary part of the day rather than an occasion. Tara and Narayan Newa have made it for about twenty years from their home in the foothills of the Nagarjung forest, west of Kathmandu. Theirs is a cottage industry in the literal sense: the work happens where they live, at the scale two pairs of hands allow. Herbs are gathered locally and ground and rolled by hand into rope incense — the twisted Himalayan form — and into sticks. The packaging is handmade paper, also sourced nearby. Because the blends are herbal rather than synthetic, the smoke is noticeably mild: closer to the smell of the hillside the ingredients came from than to perfume.