Australian adventurer, Tim Cope filmed himself riding horse-back from Mongolia to Hungary over a three year period. It finally aired on the ABC this year and was an amazing and inspiring series to watch. His insight into nomadic culture shows how perfect such a way of life is, for an environment like Central Asia. I've just finished reading "Apples are from Kazakhstan: the Land that Disappeared" by Christopher Robbins, in which he describes a little of the history of how the nomadic way of life was devastated by the destructive and ignorant policies of the Soviet Union. The nomads of Kazakhstan were forced into farming collectives, most of which failed, because the land was completely unsuitable for intensive farming, thousands of people starved to death and whole communities of nomadic families disappeared off the face of the earth.