Far East Arctic Highlights

Begin your holiday in style with included airport lounge access before your daytime flight to Anchorage in Alaska. On arrival, transfer to a hotel for an overnight stay.

Stay: Anchorage accommodation

Depending on your flight departure, enjoy some free time to explore Anchorage before transferring to the airport for your flight to Nome, a windswept outpost on the shores of the Bering Sea. Arrive and transfer to your hotel for a night of relaxation, perhaps taking a stroll through town to get a sense of the region’s gold-rush heritage.

Stay: Nome accommodation

With a full day in Nome, you’ll have the chance to head off into the surrounding wilderness – a windswept haven for caribou, muskoxen and an abundance of pretty wildflowers. Excursions include mushing, panning for gold on the beaches and trips to the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve.

Stay: SH Minerva

The gateway to the Russian Far East, this former Soviet military port on 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 Siberian Yupik that caused irreversible cultural change. From seal fishing to their renowned dancing, you'll learn about Yupik culture on a visit to a settlement at Novoye Chaplino overlooking a picturesque fjord.

Stay: SH Minerva

Arrive at the easternmost point of Russia from where, on a clear day, you can see all the way to Alaska. Enjoy a hike up to the headland where you'll reach a lighthouse and a monument to the Russian explorer Semyon Dezhnev, who rounded the Cape in 1648. Further up the coast is Naukan, an abandoned Yupik village, and Uelen, the only still-inhabited village on the cape. Home to Siberian Yupik Eskimos, Uelen is the closest Russian settlement to the United States.

Stay: SH Minerva

Conservationists will guide you over soft tundra and point out rare lichens, mosses and wildflowers, where scurrying ground squirrels hunt for food. Kolyuchin also has some of the Arctic’s most spectacular bird cliffs, with puffins, guillemots and gulls, and a photogenic walrus haul-out. Off the north coast of the Chukotka Peninsula, this small island was once an important centre for research into polar bears and walruses, one of a number dotted across the Arctic.

Stay: SH Minerva

As you cruise to your next port of call, spend the day at sea savouring the ship’s facilities and learning about your destination’s many facets from the knowledgeable onboard experts. Listen to an enriching talk, indulge in a relaxing treatment at the spa, work out in the well-equipped gym, enjoy some down- time in your cabin, share travel reminiscences with newly found friends: the options are numerous.

Stay: SH Minerva

This mostly low-lying tundra island lies off the coast of the Chukotka peninsula on the west of the Bering strait and is part of the Northern Sea Route, or Northeast passage. Ayon Island’s indigenous Chukchi population are reindeer herders. Many live in Ayon Village, a coastal settlement where you're guaranteed a warm welcome especially at the small museum set up by children. On the outskirts of the village is a Neolithic settlement, which you'll have the opportunity to explore.

Stay: SH Minerva

Also known as Bear Islands on account of the polar bears that have taken up residence on this isolated archipelago, this far-flung island group is located above Russia, in the inhospitable East Siberian Sea. The arctic flora draws naturalists for wildflowers including buttercups, yellow poppies and rockfoil, as well as lichens and mosses that carpet the tundra. Natural rock pillars stand sentinel on Chetyrbok Stolbovoy (Four Spires Island), where you'll have the chance to go ashore and hike to see an abandoned weather station.

Stay: SH Minerva

As you cruise to your next port of call, spend the day at sea savouring the ship’s facilities and learning about your destination’s many facets from the knowledgeable onboard experts. Listen to an enriching talk, indulge in a relaxing treatment at the spa, work out in the well-equipped gym, enjoy some down- time in your cabin, share travel reminiscences with newly found friends: the options are numerous.

Stay: SH Minerva

Breaching grey and beluga whales, ringed seals and bearded seals swim close to the shore. Inaccessible for much of the year, changing weather conditions mean that in recent years the island has become ice-free earlier and earlier in the season, and the occasional finback whale from Mexico can even be been spotted off the coast. Tundra covers much of this huge island with coastal plains and central mountains creating a rich ecosystem with the highest level of biodiversity in the high Arctic.

Stay: SH Minerva

Named for the colourful flora and wildflowers on the mossy tundra, such as yellow arctic poppies, Cape Florens helped give the island its unique status as the northernmost World Heritage Site. It is also one of the places we might get to spot foraging Siberian brown and northern collared lemmings (often hunted down by snowy owls), alongside Wrangel’s other inland fauna species – arctic foxes, wolverines, muskoxen and reindeer.

Stay: SH Minerva

Observe the only permanent colony of nesting snow geese in Asia as you hike across the tundra to the Mammoth River. Twitchers might glimpse other tundra- loving birds including spoon-billed sandpipers, peregrine falcons, arctic tern, gulls and skuas who feed on this ancient, protected natural reserve. Nearby are the relics of a 3,400-year-old Paleo-Eskimo camp while at Drangi Bay, a dense population of Pacific walrus haul out watched by predatory polar bears. The huge number of polar bear dens makes Wrangel Island the world’s largest denning ground. Nearby, at Rogers Bay, is the abandoned settlement Ushakovskoye, a former fishing village where tusks strewn across the tundra and beaches are a testament to the long-extinct dwarf mammoth that once roamed this remote Siberian island, believed to be the last place on earth where mammoths survived.

Stay: SH Minerva

As you cruise to your next port of call, spend the day at sea savouring the ship’s facilities and learning about your destination’s many facets from the knowledgeable onboard experts. Listen to an enriching talk, indulge in a relaxing treatment at the spa, work out in the well-equipped gym, enjoy some down-time in your cabin, share travel reminiscences with newly found friends.

Stay: SH Minerva

Take the Zodiacs to a small lagoon at the southern end of the Proliv Senyavina passage, followed by a short hike across the tundra to the Proliv Senyavina Hot Springs. If you fancy a dip, either hop into the stream heated with the natural hot springs or soak in the small pool. The mysterious Whale Bone Alley is the main attraction on this remote Siberian island off the coast of Chukotka. 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.

Stay: SH Minerva

Return to Provdeniya for a final chance to learn more about the region’s unique culture and soak up some more of those dramatic fjord views before your final voyage back to Nome.

Stay: SH Minerva

Having crossed the international date line, you’ll disembark in Nome this morning and transfer to the airport for your flight, via Anchorage, to Seattle. On arrival, transfer to your accommodation and look forward to two days of city exploration before your flight home. Take a stroll along the waterfront, visit Pike’s Place Market or grab a coffee at the original Starbucks. Alternatively, head out into the countryside for views of beautiful Mt. Ranier.  

Stay: Seattle accommodation

Enjoy a leisurely breakfast and a final chance to explore before transferring to the airport today for your overnight flight to the UK, arriving home on day 20.