The farm, the valley and the family

The Nepali Rudraksha beads are sorted at our own collection point, and shipped from here — and the same trees supply the seed for the saplings we raise in the nursery.

Nearly every Rudraksha shop online buys finished, sorted beads from a wholesaler, who bought them from a collector, who bought them from someone at the tree. Each hand adds a margin and removes a fact. By the time a bead reaches a retail site, nobody can say which slope it grew on.

We are the first hand — the grower, the nursery and the collector. That is the only real difference between us and the rest. It is why every bead page here carries a harvest season, a village and a sorting date instead of adjectives, and why our prices are lower: none of those margins are added to them.

The figures behind that, from altitude to harvest months, are kept on one page: Rudraksha facts from our farm.

A farm with its own trees has its own seed, so beside the orchard there are beds of young Rudraksha coming on — seed-grown saplings and grafted stock off mother trees we have picked from for years. Two to three years in the beds before one is robust enough to go out.

We sell them. Temples, ashrams and farms in Nepal and India plant them by the dozen; further afield it is usually one tree for a courtyard. A live plant ships on a phytosanitary certificate and your import permit, not in a padded envelope, so it is quoted per consignment rather than listed at a price.