Offering climate and conditions similar to the Swiss Alps, Altai’s resorts are preparing facilities to handle 200,000 visitors per year. With so many unique natural features and comfortable lodging, I’m sure that there will be plenty of people traveling to Altai over the next few years,

The Altai Mountains offer unique scenic, cultural and historical attractions, with rushing streams, alpine meadows, rocky mountains and caves. The air has twice as many ions as in the Swiss Alps. Azure Katun, a tourist complex opened in 2001, bills itself as the “Altai Adventure Park” and will be geared to youth, sports and extreme tourism. The Altai Valley project is aimed at familes, with an artificial lake and three artificial islands and hotels to suit various incomes, sports grounds, an aqua park and an ethnographic village. Two ski resorts with 32 tracks and 15 lifts are to be built near Lake Mangerok and the Karakol mountain lakes.

The Altai Valley has some extra lures: it borders the other tourist attractions of Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China; and investing in tourism is safer and more profi table where there is high liquidity and the Republic of Altai is near the top of the relevant regional ratings.

In addition, one of Russia’s four gambling areas, “Russian Las Vegases”, is to be set up in the Altai area. (By July 1, 2009, gaming will be banned everywhere in Russia apart from the four gambling zones.) (Russia Beyond the Headlines)

Share This