Mongolia is experiencing the worst famine in a generation, as Peter Foster found when he spent time with nomads in the one of the most inhospitable terrains on earth.

The looming catastrophe is so serious that the United Nations has issued an urgent appeal for assistance for this remote corner of Asia, a region so inhospitable that westerners rarely penetrate it. Photo: ADAM DEAN

This has been one of those winters; fattening the carrion feeders, the crows, magpies and stooping, black vultures on the carcasses of more than two million farm animals, with another two million expected to perish before the winter ends.

The looming catastrophe is so serious that the United Nations has issued an urgent appeal for assistance for this remote corner of Asia, a region so inhospitable that westerners rarely penetrate it.

A drought last summer meant that the sparse grazing yielded even less nutrition than usuaRead more at www.telegraph.co.uk