My journey of passion with perfumes /scents
I am 65 years old and has been using attars/perfumes since age of 5-6 . I belong to a small town in Pakistan. As long as I remember the house was full of the smell of roses , Jasmine and night blooming Jasmine along with other flowers grown in practically in every household’s garden .
My father used to distill rose water, aniseed water and other herbal waters .
We used to drink Rose water, Aniseed water and Araq Gauzban very frequently. Pure rose water was used in everyday cookeries. Rose petals mixed with sugar called Gulkand was a famous and traditional remedy for constipation.
I used to place the Rose petals and Jasmine petals in mustard oil which was creating its own perfumed oil. These were my first attempts to use flowers to make attars when I was just a boy.
Pakistan was a poor country and we could not afford alcohol based perfumes as this technology was not established. Neither could we afford to buy imported products.
I remember the first foreign product I could afford in early seventies. This was a perfume called Charlie and to this very day, I still remember the sweet smell of that perfume.
With the passage of time, my passion has continued to grow and gradually I was able to buy higher priced perfumes and attars .
I graduated in medicine in 1984 and relocated to the UK in 1986.
The first time I visited Saudi Arabia in 1993, I was so surprised with the variety and quality of attars in particular those of varying ouds and roses. The products from Abdul Samad Qureshi, Ajmal, were just superb .Though they were expensive, I could now afford them and since then, gradually my cupboard has started to fill with perfumes and attars. I have two children, a son and a daughter and they too have started to fell in love with perfumes and attars. Between us, we have an extensive collection of attars and perfumes.
I retired in 2018 and started to study perfumes and attars to fulfill my interest. I attended different seminars, courses on line and studied authentic books in this subject.
I learnt that there are primarily three different products.
Purely natural essential oils derived from plants.
A pure essential oil is oil that has been distilled or extracted from only one particular variety of plant with nothing being added to it.
Essential oils are made up of tiny molecules and are very powerful . Such that applying them directly on the skin is enough for them to perform their function, as also they are tiny enough to enter into the body through inhalation.
Purely synthetically made in laborites
A mixture/blend of the above two.
I then began to think and question, why should I not establish my own business? Concentrating mainly on naturally sourced products. My main focus was to obtain only high quality oils from roses and ouds.
I researched and found that the best quality roses in world are
The Taif Rose in Saudi Arabia but the quantity of roses grown there are not enough to produce good amounts to deliver to other parts of the world. The quantity is mostly consumed in Saudi Arabia and in Arabian countries.
The second best rose oil in the world is from Bulgaria. Nature has provided Bulgaria with around 100 km square area where mainly roses are grown within The Rose Valley. Bulgaria hosts a Rose Festival in June every year. I decided to visit the rose festival and The Rose Valley along with my daughter. The event was unforgettable. Not only we vested above but also managed to visit distilleries and saw organic rose oil distillation. I also managed to deal with distillers to buy pure rose oil directly and have now developed great working partners.
Third best rose oil is distilled in Morocco where I am planning to visit next and make arrangements to buy pure rose oil directly from distillers avoiding the middleman.
Ouds .
I researched and found that the best oud oils are from Cambodia, India, Malaysia , Thailand ,Sri Lanka etc.
Travelling to Cambodia seemed bit dangerous and fear of impurity in Indian Ouds, I decided to visit Malaysia. I managed to meet the owner of the distillery in person and visited his distillery in order to experience and purchase upper class quality oil from the source . He kindly took us to his farm where he had 30000 agarwood trees and showed us the workers working in the jungle to obtain oud wood.
In a nut shell my aim is to collect high class natural rose and oud oils and deliver them to the ouds and rose loving fellows like me. I wish I can fulfil my ambition and I believe that it’s never too late to follow your true passion.
