Arctic

On a clear day you can see Alaska from this rugged mountainous wilderness. It’s a good hike up the headland where you will see a lighthouse and a monument to the Russian explorer Semyon Dezhnev, who rounded the Cape in 1648. Further up the coast overlooking the Bering Strait is the village of Uelen - the closest Russian settlement to the US. Known locally as “Land’s End”, it is home to some of the Siberian Yupik Eskimos who continue their ancestors’ tradition of whale and walrus hunting for a few weeks of the year. Fossilised ivory and walrus teeth feature in the Yupik’s intricate carvings.

Nesting puffins are the show stealers at Kolyuchin Bay on the north shore of the Chukotka Peninsula. Both horned and tufted puffin cram the craggy rock faces and, above, guillemots, kittiwakes, pelagic cormorants and thick-billed murres swarm and dive for fish. Herds of Pacific walrus bask on nearby rocks. Heading into the tidal areas of Kolyuchin Bay, watch out for more birdlife on the dunes. Onshore, our conservationists will guide you over the soft tundra and point out rare lichens, mosses and wildflowers where scurrying ground squirrels hunt for food.

Tusks strewn across tundra and beaches are testament to the long-extinct woolly mammoth that once roamed this remote Siberian island. Largely untouched by humans, this ancient and protected natural reserve lays claim to one of the world’s largest populations of bellowing Pacific walruses and one of the only colonies of nesting snow geese in Asia. Arctic foxes and white snowy owls hunt down the pocket-sized Wrangel lemmings who forage on the cushiony tundra moss and lichen alongside hairy muskoxen and domestic reindeer. There are polar bears, too and twitchers might catch a glimpse of spoon-billed sandpipers and migratory birds such as peregrine falcons and seabirds including Arctic tern, gulls and skuas. Breaching grey, beluga or bowhead whales and ring seals or bearded seals swim close to the shore.

Also known as Bear Islands - on account of the polar bears having taken up residence on this isolated archipelago - this far-flung island group is located above Russia, in the inhospitable East Siberian Sea. It’s the Arctic flora that draws naturalists from around the world to this six-strong island group. Although it remains ice-bound for much of the year, the lush tundra hosts wildflowers (buttercups, yellow poppies and rockfoil), lichens and mosses in abundance. Natural rock pillars stand sentinel on Chetyrbok Stolbovoy (Four Spires Island), where you can go ashore and hike to see the pillars, as well as an abandoned weather station. Trips to other low-lying Bear Islands include hiking to the old lighthouse on Pushkareva Island.

Renowned for its preserved mammoth remains found in the boggy tundra permafrost, the treeless landscape on Zhokhov Island is in the De Long archipelago, part of the larger New Siberian Islands in the Russian Arctic’s extreme north. Budding palaeontologists regularly discover washed-up fossilised ivory on its shores. As the permafrost melts due to global warming, the mossy cliffs are slowly disintegrating into the sea. On land, the Arctic tundra is made of mosses and lichens, while wildflowers flourish alongside Arctic foxes, lemmings and snowy owls.

Four glaciers form a solid ice cap on this far-flung island near the top of the world in the Russian Arctic. The largest of the De Long Islands, one of three island groups of the New Siberian Islands, Bennett Island is also home to the 1,398 ft high Mount De Long. Plumes, sometimes visible from space, are thought to be methane escaping from the melting tundra permafrost, but they remain scientifically unexplained.

Little auks, a tiny black-and-white Arctic seabird, breed here on this remote frosty isle in the Russian High Arctic. Mostly covered by glaciers and Russia’s largest ice cap, Komsomolets Island is the northernmost of the archipelago Severnaya Zemlya (meaning “Northern Land”). The island group is a birdwatcher’s paradise with black-legged kittiwakes, black guillemots, ivory and glaucous gulls, and three tundra shorebirds including snow bunting, purple sandpiper and Brant goose. You might also spot Arctic lemming, Arctic foxes, wolves, stoats, Arctic hare and reindeer tracking their prey across the frozen tundra.

Join our luxury expedition ship in Nome, a remote frontier town on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula. Located on the Bering Sea this is the departure point for your cruise across the Northeast Passage. The mostly ice-free journey crosses the Bering Strait (51 miles across at its narrowest) between Russia and North America. Nome is the most famous gold rush town in Alaska (the town’s welcome sign is marked on the state’s largest gold pan). Visitors still come to celebrate the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, held each March. At the turn of the last century ‘mushing’ was the only form of transport. Nome has been inhabited by eskimo communities for thousands of years, and is also known for some of the best Eskimo dancing in Alaska. Excursions include mushing, panning for gold on the beaches and trips to the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, which protects a remnant of the Bering Land Bridge that once connected Asia with North America. This wind-swept tundra landscape on America’s western tip is also a haven for wildflowers. Hardy muskoxen and reindeer forage, bear and caribou roam, and the mountain streams provide a freshwater habitat for spawning Wild Alaskan salmon.

The gateway to the Russian Far East, this former Soviet military port on the Komsomolskaya Bay is at the southern limit of the Arctic ice pack. The town has a small museum charting the history of whaling and fishing and the displacement of the indigenous Yupik Eskimos. To learn more about the Siberian Yupik’s culture, from seal fishing to their renowned dancing, you can visit a settlement overlooking a picturesque fjord at Novoye Chaplino. The region’s relatively mild Arctic climate and scenic tundra is a big draw for photographers and provides a habitat for arctic fox, wolverine and lemmings, with the occasional bear. More than 170 species of bird have been spotted from eider to Arctic loons, as well as kittiwake, gulls, cormorants and puffins. Marine wildlife includes grey, bowhead, white, humpback and minke whales plus ringed, spotted and bearded seals, sea lions and, last but not least, the lumbering long-tusked walrus.

The mysterious Whale Bone Alley is the main attraction on this remote Siberian island. The eerie archaeological site is lined with 600-year-old whale jaw and rib bones that have been stuck into the ground and erected like archways, some five metres high. This unique 550-metre path is the perfect place to stretch your legs and ponder its mystical origins as either a shrine or a gathering place for hunters to store their food. Keep an eye out for white beluga whales swimming slowly around the shore.