Art By Tali Landsman

After a year long break from posting on my blog, I feel again the desire to write, to put things on paper and to see them in front of me, so I can clarify ideas in my mind and feel my gratitude for all the blessings in my life. My blogs are also my open and public adventure log, and I love going back to find out which places we visited, where we stayed and what we loved. We lengthened our summer by visiting Kyoto, Japan in August, followed by hot weeks roaming around Spain, finally ending up in Lisbon, Portugal. We then turned around and flew to New Zealand, where we spent another three summer months in our hillside retreat on the Hokianga Harbor. Now, sitting in front of my snowy window in Colorado, I recall some of those memories.... Our summer in Kyoto was hot and wonderfully memorable. I fell in love with Japan on our first visit to the Kyoto area, back in 2001. We were novices at traveling and at tha...

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 sen...

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 ...

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 f...