In the mid-nineties as I was travelling the highlands of East and West Timor with my young child I came upon a couple of factories in East Timor that were making malas, and buddhas for the international market. It did not take too much begging to obtain bags of Santalum album dust with the oil still in it which makes for the most graceful of incenses and infuses on charcoal blocks as only true sandalwood can.
At the same time, I was able to get a fair amount of Santalum album powder that had the oil extracted, once again I grabbed as much as I could carry. This oil out powder is an excellent base for creating and compounding incenses such as Kyphi and other delicious mixes. It has just a hint of sandalwood left in it making it ideal to enhance other ingredients that you mix with it.
Available in quantities from 30 gr to 1kg. Once again, when these supplies are gone ‘that’s all folks’ as the factories were destroyed by the outgoing Indonesians and successive centauries of plunder and mismanagement of this precious resource has left very little and certainly no sustainable supply.
I have dedicated a chapter in my book for the adventure that it took to get this dust and oil across the border back into West Timor, although at the time East and West were all part of Indonesia.
Copyright Julie Emery 22/02/2022©