Britain's Prince Harry took his girlfriend on a skiing trip to Kazakhstan, where they were given the use of a government helicopter to ferry them to the slopes, a media report said.
The 29-year-old prince and his girlfriend Cressida Bonas stayed at a chalet in the resort of Shymbulak, which is part-owned by a businessman called Serzhan Zhumashov, a close acquaintance of the Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Telegraph reported.
The trip was privately funded, and there is no suggestion that the prince was there as a guest of the Kazakh government or of Zhumashov, but having such a high-profile visitor is a major coup for the resort, which is part of Kazakhstan's bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The prince, fourth in line to the throne, and Bonas, who went to Kazakhstan with friends for a long weekend in the middle of March, are understood to have been invited as guests of one of their party.
Although the resort is not a typical destination for British tourists, it offered the couple more privacy than they would have had at a European destination, where photographers would have been alerted to their presence within hours of them arriving, the report said.
