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Far Frontiers Travel
Far Frontiers Travel specialises in tailor-making bespoke travel to Central Asia, China and Mongolia, the Far East, Indian Subcontinent and the Himalayas, Indochina, Middle East, North Africa and Europe, Russia and South America.
Birding in the Russian Far East | 15 days
Commencing in Sakhalin, this voyage covers the full Kuril Island region with its stunning volcanoes and wide diversity of birds. The Kuril Island chain is made up of 32 islands that stretch between Russia and Japan across the Bering Sea, all formed by volcanoes that rise from the sea floor. The larger of the islands are inhabited, and most people make their living from the sea, as they have done for generations. The islands are unique and look like vast botanical gardens where subtropical flora representatives neighbour with the flora of the polar latitudes. Here you will see gigantic herbs as well as bear, foxes and marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, fur seals and otters. One of the ‘birding’ highlights must be the Steller’s sea eagle.
The Kamchatka Peninsula is a land of bays and snow-capped volcanoes whose alpine meadows and lowland forests support the greatest diversity of seabirds in Asia. The seas washing these isolated coasts are among the most productive in the world and the area teems with birds and marine mammals, as do the remote Commander Islands, which we also visit.
Ship: The Spirit of Enderby
When: 25 May – 8 June 2012
Guide price:£6,895 per person based on twin cabin (shared facilities)
Clients’ comments
“This was a wonderful trip. Getting there and back was slightly trying, not because of the airlines (both Transaero and Yakutia were good) but because of the length of the flights, the hassle of boarding, stopping over in Irkutsk on the way back, and of course the time changes (3 hours London/Moscow, nearly 9 hours Moscow/Petropavlovsk, and the reverse on the way back. The voyage itself was splendid. There were some early starts and late finishes, a few rather optimistic ‘dry landings’ from zodiacs (I always wore rubber wellingtons and always needed them) and one optimistic ‘walk’ through a pass between bays which involved ploughing through deep/very deep snow for about a mile while on a slope most of the way. But we took these in our stride. We saw tons of wildlife – literally; at least two dozen whales, more than 5,000 hauled-out walruses, about 50 sea-lions, dozens of seals, and at least 15 brown bears. We were successful in finding the spoon-billed sandpiper, and the scientific element of the trip was both enlightening and exciting.”
Chris Meader, In Bering’s wake, in search of the spoon-billed sandpiper, June/July 2011