Things to do in Kamchatka

Cruise ships have a bit of a reputation as the bad boys of travel, with the huge ones chucking out CO2 and crushing coral reefs in the wake of their steely gazes, but in the case of the Russian Far East, an untouched environment with virtually no roads and very little infrastructure, expedition cruising is the only way to get up close and personal with Kamchatka’s natural wonders. Ditch any preconceptions you may have about 'cruising' – an expedition cruise is different: the boat is much smaller; there will be barely 100 passengers with you, not thousands; the onboard entertainment involves ecology talks and photography tips, and strict itineraries are chucked out the porthole. Cruising in Kamchatka is a journey, not a tour, to a destination that has been neither organised nor commercialised, but has simply been left, a staggeringly beautiful untamed wilderness where travelers must travel on nature’s terms and not to timetables.

Wildlife watching in Eastern Russia makes you feel as if you’ve stepped straight onto the set of an Attenborough doc. Wrangel Island, untouched by glaciers during the last ice age, is a treasure trove of Arctic biodiversity, known for the families of polar bears that breed there and its expert resident mammothologists who are happy to have their brains picked about the region’s unique evolutionary status. The island lies near major feeding grounds for gray whales that migrate thousands of kilometres north from their breeding grounds in Baja, Mexico, and also lays claim to the world’s largest population of Pacific walrus. Reindeer, musk ox and snow geese can often be seen further inland and Herald Island may be diminutive, but is a twitcher’s paradise of massive bird cliffs.