­The mountains catch your eye wherever you are in the Caucasus. Even when you travel from one region to another, the picturesque view of Mount Elbrus and Mount Kazbek hardly leaves the horizon. Sometimes on a clear day, even the small hills that flank these mountains are visible from far away. Right now it’s raining in the lowlands, and the peaks are already covered with white snow.

The beauty of these mountains has attracted visitors from Tsarist times. The Northern part of the Caucasus was famous for its mineral springs, the neighboring region of Kabardino-Balkaria for the highest mountain in Europe- Mount Elbrus, and Dagestan for the Caspian Sea.

The mountains catch your eye wherever you are in the Caucasus

Dozens of holiday resorts were built in Soviet times, with thousands of Russians flocking there throughout the year. But for the last twenty years, hardly anyone has come.

The last two decades changed people’s perception of this area from a holiday destination to an unsafe, volatile place.

The beauty of these mountains has attracted visitors from Tsarist times (Photo by Constantine Postnikov)

“I remember how scary the buildings in these resorts looked, with empty corridors, silence in the halls,” says Zara Salamova, who used to work as a librarian in one of the sanatoriums in the Stavropol region. “Places that had usually been fully booked till the end of the season, stood deserted.“

Signs of recovery only appeared some seven or ten years ago, starting primarily in the Northern Caucasus. Old sanatoriums were bought by private investors and reopened.

But while this area is again welcoming tourists, other beautiful parts of the Caucasus remain deserted.

There are over a dozen ski resorts here, but they all stand empty. The kiosks are shut, the lifts are not working: only the locals and the brave come here.

Only the locals and the brave come here (Photo by Constantine Postnikov)

In 2010, the Russian state created “The resorts of the North Caucasus”, a corporation determined to turn the region into a tourist center for Russia and beyond. Five major tourism projects were developed. This summer, we visited the construction of the first one. The building work looks massive, and the view is breathtaking.  But it is going to take years to build everything from scratch.

France has already signed into the project. With one important condition – that the Russian state guarantees the repayment of the credit in case of worsening of the security situation, or major incident.  

“For us locals this is something big, there are different opinions about the construction. But I believe this will bring more jobs to our region” – says Ahshar, a local. He adds “it would be nice if our region was mentioned in the news for something positive”.

Photo by Kazbek Basaev

Indeed, anti-terror raids, terrorism and armed attacks are probably the first thing that comes to mind if you think about life in the Caucasus. And that’s mostly what we hear on the news. But this is not what actual life in the Caucasus looks like.

“I take my daughter to the mountains every year, all the members of our family ski every season. There are no queues, the hotels are never fully booked, the lifts never crowded. In a way this is an advantage, but it’s also such a pity that no one knows about this wonderful place” – says Natalya from North Ossetia.

The first brand new hotels are due to be ready for the 2011 – 2012 skiing season. So there is not that much time left to boost people`s confidence in the safety of a holiday in the Caucasus. And this seems a much harder task than five star construction.