Art By Tali Landsman

You are love and light. You were born out of a matrix of eternal love. From this infinite matrix of divine love,  From this field of pulsating glowing and unified light, From the molecules of this benevolent grace, You have emerged,  Forming your unique energy-field in order to experience your individuality. It was a game we use to play,  We children of the light, Eternal travelers through endless universes, We wanted to experience 'relationships.' But how do you experience relationships,  When you KNOW that you are one with everyone and everything? In order to experience yourself in relationships, You decided to forget To forget who you REALLY are,  And to experience your-self as an individual entity. A crescent wave of the ocean Forming and dissolving who you are... In order not to lose your way in forgetfulness, You asked us to remind you, To awaken you when the time was right To send you words of love and light To send you people, or events  To send you messages, To he

The Black Market in Ulaanbaatar is also known as Naraan Tuul.  It spreads across a large section of the center of the city on the south western side of Peace Avenue. It is where locals buy everything they need, from electronics to clothing, horse saddles, ropes and blankets, shamanistic ritual props, shoes, furniture for gers, fabrics, cosmetics, carpets, traditional hats and snuff bottles, coins, cashmere, food and much more.   The concierge at our hotel was surprised when we told her that we planned to go to the Black Market, and added that they tell their guests that it is not a safe place for tourists, because many pickpockets operate there.   We really weren't at all concerned with its reputation - in fact, we were excited to visit a local market here, since it's something we try to do everywhere we travel. We walked around the busy, bustling market, taking in the faces of the people, the colors, the crafts, the traditions, and it occurred to me that this was the last d

From Terelj National Park, we drove back to Ulaanbaatar. It rained heavily on our last night in Terelj, and the electric power was down for the night and the next morning around the whole park area. I cannot say that I felt inconvenienced. We had dinner by candle light, and read lying in bed in our yurt by the light of our headlamps. Because of the power outage, all the tourist ger camps around us were quiet, with no loud music and no lights to obstruct the night stars. It was to be our last night camping in a yurt in the countryside of Mongolia. We were returning to the comforts of a five star hotel in Ulaanbaatar, the Kempinski Hotel Khan Palace.   The shower in our hotel room in Ulaanbaatar felt heavenly. We scrubbed and washed our clothes and hung them to dry, wrapped ourselves with clean bathrobes and luxuriated on the sofas, feeling so content. Everything felt like a luxury, watching the news in English, large tea cups, a comfy sofa, the clean bed, the lack of bugs and flies

From Hustai National Park, we drove east to Terelj National Park. The road from Hustai National Park, located to the west of Ulaanbaatar, passes right through the heart of the city. Because the urban infrastructure of Ulaanbaatar hasn't kept up with the city's explosive population growth in the last five years, It took two hours of bumper to bumper driving to finally get across the city. The Terelj National Park lies just to the east of Ulaanbaatar. We saw many people picnicking and camping along the Tuul and Terelj rivers. The National Park area is very impressive, with massive rock formations set among scenic valleys and hills with a winding river and groves of trees. Many nomads still live within the park boundaries, where they have grazing land for their animals, but the majority of the gers that we saw belonged to entrepreneurs and business people who somehow got the government's permission to fence off large portions of l