Chandrika – Sandal Soap

“This & That”

This particular version of Chandrika furthers the Chandrika mystery. (Because there are several similar but different soaps with the Chandrika name.) It's tan, light brown, not green, but smells like Chandrika, but also sandalwood. The bar looks like the green Chandrika oval bar, but tan-brown. The smell is pretty sandalwood, classic sandalwood, but also a bit like Chandrika. I think it is really a combination of the two. That means a combination of two good soap types. The ingredients on the box are no help—it's not actually an ingredient list. Free from animal fat, at least. Look, I could spend the rest of today on the internet and solve nothing. I could spend the rest of my life chasing after the mystery of this soap. I could travel to India, and solve even less, because India is big place, and you'd need an expert to track this stuff down, and when it comes to experts, there are experts and there are experts. I'm just going to go by bathing with it for the time it took to dwindle. This is a good soap. It's probably not as intensely sandal as some other sandal soaps I've had, and it's not as Chandrika as the two varieties of Chandrika I've had (all of which are some of my favorites)—so maybe it's a bit of a compromise—but in itself, this is a fine soap, and inexpensive—you can't go wrong here.

Soap Review No. 106