Ski Armenia

Armenia has one main ski area on Mount Teghenis which rises 2,820 meters (9,260 feet) above sea level. The five chairlifts (including a quad chair) provide a vertical drop of 850 metres (2,790 feet) and the area is famed for its empty slopes, spectacular views and very low priced lift passes compared to Western Europe or North America.

Tsakhkadzor has been Armenia's main winter tourism destination since early 1970s and the town hosted the USSR Olympic team (summer not winter!) in 1968 for altitude training, before the Olympics in Mexico, as Tsakhkadzor is at roughly the same altitude as Mexico City. It is located 60km (37 miles) from capital Yerevan.

For visitors Armenia is a small, land-locked nation to the East of Turkey and north of Iran, it was the first country in the world to officially adopt Christianity just after the end of the third century AD and has been independent of the Soviet Union for more than 20years.

Relatively mountainous, there’s no part of Armenia lower than 300m above sea level and the country has a particular attachment to Mount Ararat, now in Turkey but clearly visible from the slopes of Mount Teghenis, where Noah’s ark is supposed to have come to rest after the Biblical flood.