Kannauj The Perfume Capital of India

On the banks of the Ganga, Kannauj has distilled flowers into oil for more than four hundred years. The method — deg-bhapka — has barely changed.

Copper, clay and sandalwood

Petals are heated with water in a copper deg sealed with clay. The fragrant steam travels through a bamboo pipe into a bhapka holding sandalwood oil, which slowly absorbs the scent over days.

Mitti attar: the smell of rain

Perhaps the most poetic attar of all is distilled from baked earth, capturing petrichor — the smell of the first monsoon rain on dry soil.