Jalair Batbayar was born in Ulaan Baatar on 2nd April 1959 and still lives there today. He is a painter, a poet and a calligrapher. He has written, in beautiful calligraphy, the poems that accompany thirty photographs he selected from this book. Jalair Batbayar is a self-taught master of calligraphy. He learned it secretly during the Soviet era. At that time, Buddhist temples and books were destroyed. Nomads were entrusted with the books from monasteries and they protected them by hiding them in rock crevices in the middle of the steppe. Jalair Batbayar was therefore able to keep on learning and practising the arts of painting, calligraphy and poetry clandestinely. Since 1991, when Mongolia became officially independent, he has been practising these arts openly and has had exhibitions in various locations in Ulaan Baatar, Japan and, more recently, in Washington, in the United States with the National Geographic Society. In 2001, he wrote and published a book on the history of Mongolian writing and has been teaching painting since 1990.