Participants arrive at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the capital town of Kamchatka, and are promptly transferred from the airport to a comfortable hotel. The day is spent adjusting to the weather and visiting the market to buy some essential gear like head-torches and gumboots at affordable prices which is essential for the rest of our expedition. Later in the evening, a welcome-dinner will ensue in the restaurant discussing the prospects of the Tour with Skipper Jayanth Sharma.

We take a boat from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky out of the Avacha Bay into the Pacific Ocean to see and photograph seals, Pacific gulls and, rather excitingly, killer whales.

These giant marine-emperors are rewarding photographic subjects, as they challenge your reflexes with their spectacular acrobatics above the water surface, ‘porpoising’, ‘breaching’ or ‘skyhopping’ in some sort of aquatic dance performance, holding you in a relentless grip of total enthrallment.

Equal to the allure of the orcas are the lower rungs of the food chain, the Steller’s sea lions, Northern fur seals, harbour seals and spotted seals, which often strut out in the open presenting themselves as sitting targets from atop the rocks.

Breaking away from the ship in small zodiac boats to feel the sea from closer quarters, we can get close enough to resting seals to get wide-angle perspectives and other creative opportunities.

Our tryst with the Kamchatka brown bears begins as we reach the Kurilskoye Lake by evening, and along the way, we’ll visit the following volcanoes.

Ksudach Volcano

The weather allowing, a morning helicopter-flight lasting an hour will take us to the Ksudach Volcano (in the event of inclement weather, a second attempt will be made to visit it on the fifth day while returning from Kurilskoye Lake).

After landing, we take a walk into the crater lake of Schtubelya, which is situated inside Ksudach Volcano, and then visit a beautiful waterfall where water pours out of the crater. Later, we visit a ‘hot beach’ – a site of hot springs on the shore of a lake, and then fly to the famous Kurilskoye Lake – an experience that will have uniqueness stamped all over it.

Mutnovsky Volcano

Going by helicopter, we disembark just below the 20000-year-old volcanic hills of Skalisty and Dvugorby, to climb up a foot-trail past steam springs, from where the trio of volcanoes of Asacha, Opala and Gorely are seen. The route then traverses by the hillside, crossing three snow-fields, before a final rise to the mouth of the caldera exit gorge.

Climbing the slopes of the glacial till, we descend slightly to the snout of the western glacier, slicing straight through fumaroles and mud pools, watching streams emerging from the snow and ice fields, and flowing back under the glacier toe.

Taking a recess after the helicopter ride at 1540m, we continue to explore the area close to the active crater from where the fumaroles can be seen on the crater floor, which is about 350m across, and its walls drop nearly vertically for over 100m.

Weather Conditions: Helicopter rides are subject to weather conditions. We will make every effort to adhere to the primary plan, but extempore modifications to the expedition itinerary may be inevitable under prevailing conditions. If we cannot visit these volcanoes on this day as scheduled, we will make another attempt later. No refunds will be made if weather disrupts landings on the volcanoes.

Kurilskoye Lake

Following this excursion in the afternoon, we arrive at our lodge at Grassy Point, a small and cozy wooden affair, which affords a magnificent view of Kurilskoye Lake and the surrounding mountains – a setup very similar to having a giant wallpaper outside your balcony. While we put our feet up and relax, we look out for bears that are often seen fishing along the lakeshore from the lodge. Afterwards, we venture onto the lake’s pumice rock beach and receive our in-camp instructions for the rest of the Tour.

For the next two days, Kamchatka’s wildlife takes centre-stage, as we visit salmon-spawning places to pursue brown bears. We enjoy a walking excursion with local wardens to a nearby bear-viewing platform that is not far from the lodge and is located at the mouth of the several rivers that drain into Kurilskoye Lake. Here we have a good chance of making excellent, close-up images of bears fishing for migrating salmon, which stay briefly in the lake before moving on to the streams where they ‘spawn’. The bears’ opportunism will be matched by ours, as we seek to capture this unique phenomenon in all its extravagance.

We will also undertake longer walking excursions to a large meadow where bears feed on wild berries and visit other spawning streams farther from the lodge. Along these streams we are likely to see salmon and consequently bears fishing just a few yards away as we walk along the stream banks.

Khodutka

We start day five with another walk to the bear viewing platform and later in the evening, a helicopter will fly us to the Khodutka River for a blissful bath in Kamchatka’s largest natural hot spring. The water sprouts from a section of tundra just below the Khodutka Volcano, forming a stream. Further downstream, the water gradually cools and we can find a section of the stream which is at just the right temperature for a dip of hedonism.

Following this sensual experience, we board the helicopter again, which takes us to the Ksudach and Mutnovsky Volcano plateau all the way up to the caldera if we failed to do this earlier due to weather conditions.

At the end of day 7, we return to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and stay over for the night.

Participants not availing of the optional extension check out after breakfast and are transferred to the airport for their departure for Moscow and thence home.