Tibetan Nuns Project

The Tibetan Nuns Project's incense is made by Buddhist nuns at Khachoe Ghakyil (Kopan) Nunnery in Nepal's Kathmandu Valley, home to around 360 nuns, working in a dedicated workroom where the incense paste is extruded by hand into sticks and coils rather than machine-pressed. The recipes use only natural high-altitude plants and woods — combinations such as lemongrass with white sandalwood, and juniper with cedarwood — drawing on traditional Tibetan medicinal ingredients rather than synthetic fragrance oils. A second line, Lama Chodpa, is made at Tashi Jong Monastery in the Indian Himalayas using ingredients including saffron, agarwood, Himalayan silver fir, camphor and valerian. Sales of both lines support the nuns who make them directly, and purchases through the Tibetan Nuns Project's own store additionally fund food, shelter, education and healthcare for more than 900 nuns across seven nunneries in India that the organization supports — including Dolma Ling Nunnery and Institute near Dharamsala, where nuns run a separate handicrafts program making dolls and other goods from recycled monastic robes. The incense itself reflects the same self-sufficiency model behind Dolma Ling's tailoring workshop: monastic communities producing sellable goods so that humanitarian aid isn't the only thing keeping the nunneries running.