Hello sorry for my english.Friends want to introduce you to my homeland. The center of the mainland Eurasia.Altai is a beautiful and untouched land. These are mountain plateaus with camels and noble marals, snow leopards and glacial lakes, turquoise rivers and raging waterfalls, glacial lakes and dense forests. All this can be seen in a week. The nature here is amazing and diverse.
Unusual in the ordinary
We graze sheep on motorcycles and cruisers, because there are no roads in the steppes - there are directions. Here adults go hunting with iPhones, and their children live in the ail and surf the Internet.
We do not have trams and trains, but fly planes.
And we do not have plants and factories, little work, and in general a crisis, but people live together in harmony.
Wide open space
Altai is huge, more than many European countries, but here everyone will find privacy per square kilometer.
In the mountains, villages here are relatively rare, more often found in the foothills. A third of all residents live in Gorno-
Altaisk.
Short hot summer and long frosty winter
The coldest in Kosh-Agach - here are steppes and high mountains, there is little precipitation. Warmer in Chemal - the climate is very favorable and probably the warmest in Siberia.
The mountains hold the cold front well, for example in Novosibirsk -40 ° C is the norm, in Gorno-Altaisk -35 ° C it is already a rarity. However, the Kosh-Agach and Ulagan districts are equated to the Far North.
Recently, something has been going on with the weather: it is raining like a bucket on New Year's Eve, a hail the size of an egg, a powerful flood, even a tornado.
What do we earn?
The Altai Republic is a subsidized subject, or simply “free riders”. No production, no factories, no plants. We live poorly. What do we earn?
In agriculture, we breed livestock and grow crops. But the economy is still based on tourism. And the Altai residents - the most credited in the country, absolutely straight.
How to get to us?
We don’t have trains, but there is a good airport and a wretched old bus station in the city center.
Buses go to each district center, but further into the wilderness on the road, by taxi or something else.
And we have one main road - the Chuisky tract, the rest are underdeveloped with potholes and pits. Provisions are delivered only on wagons, therefore, the farther,
the prices are higher.
Altai Mountains
In Siberia, the highest. In general, much has already been written about the Altai mountains, I will add, we have not only mountains. There are tundras and steppes, alpine meadows and flowering valleys, even Martian deserts.
Scientists say that mountains are growing - after a powerful earthquake in 2003, it shakes constantly. The ridges rise a couple of centimeters a year. There are no active volcanoes.
Altai mummy
The first settlements appeared here almost a million years ago in ... modern Gorno-Altaisk. Do not believe? Now there is a museum here. This is surprising, but the city is now only 89 years old.
Back in 1993, scientists found the girl's mummy on the Ukok Plateau (a place rather harsh). Later, journalists dubbed her the "Altai Princess." Immediately after the excavation, a series of interesting events occurred and rumors of a kind of curse began to spread. People began to be angry and demand the speedy burial. For a long time, the mummy was in Novosibirsk under the attention of scientists, but here in Gorno-Altaisk there were special conditions for storage, and she migrated to the National Museum. Anokhin. Visitors are shown only the layout.
The Chuy earthquake in 2003, a crushing hail and unprecedented flooding in 2014 - local residents associate these events with a curse, and our authorities are already famously playing with the issue of mummy and return burial in their election campaigns.
Why are there miserable Altai elections? Even H. Clinton, according to Observer , lost the presidency of the USA to D. Trump in 2016 because of the “curse” of Ukok’s mummy, because the former first lady “visited” her in 1997 during a visit to Novosibirsk. WTF?
Irbis, argali, wisent and maral
These animals are the symbol of Altai. You are lucky if you see any of them. Maralov and bison can still be found in nurseries.
And the Red Book irbis and argali behind the cage will not be met, only in the wild. There are very few of them left, and they live far away from the roads and prying eyes, which fortunately.
Tea with honey
There is no such taste in the world. All from natural products: herbs, berries, roots and fruits growing in the Altai Mountains.
It produces more than 300 varieties of honey and bee products.
This is Altai, baby
Altai gave the world five UNESCO heritage sites:
Teletskoye lake
Belukha Mountains
Altai Reserve
Katunsky Reserve
Ukok Plateau
And interesting things to do:
Belukha - the highest mountain peak of Siberia
Ob - one of the largest rivers in the world, form the Katun and Biya
More than 20 000 rivers. If you add up their length, you can go around the globe and another half
About 7,000 lakes with an area of Saint Lucia (or just 600 km²)
40 000 km³ of fresh water only in Teletskoye Lake
Teletskoye Lake is a very deep lake, the fifth deepest in Russia, 325 meters
Vodoskat Uchar - the largest in Siberia
Cedar, a lot of cedar, a lot of cedar cones
Altai - the ancestral home of the Turkic language family
Finds of the tract Pazyryk are carefully preserved in the Hermitage
It was in the Altai Mountains that Nicholas Roerich was looking for Belovodye
The world's first car suspension bridge
The most delicious honey in Russia
Gorno-Altaisk - one of the cleanest cities in Russia for several years in a row
The glaciers of the Altai - in terms of quantity, area and thickness of ice, occupy the third place in the world
Chuysky tract - NatGeo included it in the TOP-5 of the most beautiful roads of the world
Yalomanskaya hemp - we did not try, but really appreciate in Amsterdam
Everyone will find something for themselves
People come here to take a break from the frantic city rhythm, to get away from the hustle and bustle and think. Someone goes to the mountains, someone needs adrenaline and physical activity, and someone just roll a seal and scratch his belly.
One thing unites all these people - what remains inside after Altai.
Our coordinates
Gorny Altai (Altai Republic) is located in southwestern Siberia.
We live in the 4th time zone in Moscow - when they eat there, they leave home for work.
By the way, they are often confused with the Altai Territory. No, comrades, these are two different subjects. Our neighbors are the Altai Territory in the northwest, the Kemerovo Region in the northeast, Khakassia and Tuva in the east, Mongolia and China in the south, and Kazakhstan in the Southwest.
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