The famous Altai - in his poetic imagery, the writer Galsan Tschinag, who was born there, describes the mountains as follows: the "mountains defending against the clouds", "wild white peaks", "winding rivers", "precipitous, dizzying gorges with silent black forests". Or to put it prosaically: an almost inaccessible mountain landscape between Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China with several four-thousanders, with 1330 glaciers, with only a few roads and without railway connections or navigable waters.

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