The Bizarre Origin of Kyara

Here’s yet another Kyara theory some of you might find interesting. I met a bright and resourceful scientist in Borneo who was fascinated with the resination process of agarwood, particularly that of Kyara. Based in Malaysian Borneo, where you find numerous centennial aquilarias with zero infection, he hypothesized that the reason so many of the Cambodian and Vietnamese wild trees of old were infected across the board was because of all the wars that took place in those countries’ jungles. He’d even studied the effects of bullet fillers on aquilaria cultures in his lab and made a shockingly convincing case that the attributes of Kyara could be traced back to the effects of bullet sulphur inside the wounded trees.

Kruger and I kept exchanging meaningful glances from across the table as he made his case, and we were all but convinced that the sole reason Kyara is almost exclusively found in Vietnam is thanks to the Vietnam War. The amount of bullets that went into those trees is unspeakable. And the effect of bullet sulphur inside the trunk was demonstrably different to the effects of say, lava touching the roots, or any type of bug stinging the trunk. If it weren’t that Kyara was also found centuries ago, prior to the whistling of shrapnel in the jungles, there would be no shadow of a doubt in my mind that Kyara is just ‘bullet agarwood’!