MOSCOW: In sub-zero temperatures outside Moscow, teams of husky dogs pull tourists from Oman and the UAE across picturesque snow-covered fields in sleds, delighting their passengers who have never experienced a Russian winter before.
Nearby, a couple from Qatar feed a small herd of deer and other tourists from the Middle East drive a hovercraft at high speed across a snowy lake.
“It was like drifting in the desert but here on ice,” said Badreya Almarooqi, a tourist from the UAE at the Nazarievo Husky Park — 45 km west of central Moscow — where signs are written in Arabic as well as Russian.
North of the city, another group of Gulf tourists crowd into a hot air balloon to drift over a vast snowy landscape.
“(It was) one of the best activities in my life!” said Ayoub Aziz, a tourist from Saudi Arabia drawn to the experience in the Dmitrov district 65 km from the city center, one of many such activity destinations dotted around the capital.
