Rudraksha in Canada — direct from Nepal.

Delivery, duty, and what we declare

Parcels travel tracked from Kathmandu, typically 3–12 days, to any serviceable Canadian postal code — Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and beyond. Import charges in Canada are assessed by the CBSA and collected by the courier on delivery; the amount depends on the goods and your province, and we will not invent a percentage to make a sale look cheaper. Every shipment carries a truthful commercial invoice describing finished seed-bead handicraft, because honest declarations are what keep parcels moving.

Remote and northern postal codes add a few days at the Canadian end — the parcel reaches the country on schedule and then travels at the speed of the last leg. We publish no per-city day counts, and that is deliberate: no seller in the Himalaya can promise a Tuesday in Whitehorse, and the ones who do are spending your patience rather than their own. What we do commit to is the tracking number on the day the parcel leaves, and your address read back to you on WhatsApp before you pay.

Plant material — why a finished bead is not a seed

Canada regulates the import of seeds and plant material through the CFIA, and buyers reasonably wonder where a rudraksha sits. The distinction that matters is what the bead has become: ours are dried, drilled, polished and threaded — finished religious handicraft, cleaned of soil and debris as a matter of craft long before any border asked — not viable seed brought in for sowing, which is a different category with its own permit and certification rules. We declare them as exactly what they are. Said plainly, because it is the house style: the final decision at any border belongs to Canadian authorities, and nobody, us included, can guarantee clearance. What we control is a clean parcel and a truthful invoice, which is what the system exists to wave through.

Bracelets, malas, and the shaligram question

Search from a Canadian address and two things come up that the rest of this page has not answered. The first is bracelets — the usual first rudraksha here, worn on the wrist rather than counted, and normally strung from Five Mukhi, the bead the tradition holds suitable for anyone with no condition attached. Ours are hand-knotted in Kathmandu and priced on request; the three are on the bracelet page, and a 108-bead japa mala is the other common place to start. There is no men's rudraksha and no women's rudraksha — the tradition sets no condition of sex or age, and a seller who tells you otherwise is selling a category rather than a bead.

The second is shaligram, and Canadian visitors ask about it more than about any other single subject on this site. A shaligram shila is not a rudraksha at all: it is a fossil-bearing ammonite stone from the bed of the Kali Gandaki in Mustang, worshipped as a form of Vishnu, and it is found rather than grown or made. Because each one is unique there is no price list — we photograph what is in the house and quote against the specific stone. Start with the shaligram guide, which explains the markings and what the tradition reads in them, then see what we have.

Toronto, Vancouver, and the question a shop cannot answer

Gerrard Street East, Main Street in Brampton, the import shops off Vancouver's Fraser Street — Canada has no shortage of places to buy a bead. What it has a shortage of is anyone who can tell you which valley the bead grew in. Much of what sells across North America is Javanese, and the fraud is not that Indonesian beads exist — they are genuine seeds of the same species — but that they are priced and labelled as Nepali. A shop that bought a tray wholesale cannot answer the provenance question, because the answer was lost two intermediaries upstream.

So ask the four questions on our compare page of any seller, ourselves included: where did it grow, what proof comes before payment, is the price quoted in writing before you pay, and where does the parcel ship from. If you already own a bead and want an honest read on it, send photographs — the photo check is free on any bead, whoever sold it to you.

Prices in C$ — on request

Prices are on request for now. Choose a mukhi and ask on WhatsApp: we quote per piece, in Canadian dollars if you prefer, against photographs of the exact bead, and confirm the figure in writing before you pay. Import charges are separate and collected by the courier, as described above.

Questions Canadian buyers ask