It may look like an American prairie but this is the Great Hungarian Plain in Hortobagy, Europe's answer to the Wild West.

For more than 2,000 years, the area has been home to a rich cultural tradition of pastoral living and animal husbandry techniques - from ancient nomadic tribes who left behind stone burial mounds known as kurgans, to the fierce Magyar warriors who arrived in the late ninth century and founded a network of settlements along the Tisza River, according to BBC Travel.

The plain covers 52,000 sq km in eastern and southern Hungary alone, encompassing 56 per cent of the country. At the heart of this region lies the Hortobagy National Park which was awarded World Heritage status in 1999.

Herders and csikos, Hungarian cowboys, oversee breeds of curly haired pig and scimitar-horned cattle. The csikos are well-known for their prowess on horseback too.