Mongolia

Connoisseurs of adventure travel take note: Mongolia opened up to the outside world two decades ago, and the few who have ventured in have beheld one of the world's last remaining horse-based nomadic cultures. A vanishing veneer of 20th-century Soviet socialism had little impact on traditional Mongolian life. Most people still live in felt gers (yurts) with their livestock and horses by their side, practicing a pastoral lifestyle and Tibetan Buddhism that has remained unchanged for centuries.