It is the most secluded corner of the country, the very edge of the world, where one can enjoy fishing with bears, cook scrambled eggs on volcanic lava, swim with whales, and be the first one in Russia to watch the sun rise. Kamchatka.
One has to be mature to embark on a journey to the Eastern peninsula. Before the invention of the planes, people would travel for almost a year to get to the rugged wilderness of a three-hundred-volcanoes land only to see the Northern summer, geysers, and poisonous lakes and breathe in the cleanest taiga air. In the Soviet Era, Kamchatka was closed to the citizens, with only foreigners visiting it.
Here, the sand is black, not yellow; there are no snakes or ticks, and only three towns. Birch trees grow sinking deep into the water — impossible to uproot with an axe. Kamchatka is the land of the purest mountain rivers and acid vapours.
There are ‘Gates of Hell’ here, and after volcanic eruptions, the locals make angels out of ash. The peninsula is known as a place of Lunokhod rovers’ testing — and rightly so, as the landscapes are a match for them.
— how the black dead world comes back to life;
— why you can rest peacefully in the presence of bears
— why Indigenous peoples of Kamchatka travel thousands of kilometers across the tundra;
— what the caviar of freshly caught salmon tastes like;
— what the taiga looks like with volcanic peaks on the horizon;
— why the lake in the volcano’s crater is matte blue;
— what it feels like when you have a fresh crab for lunch, and at the same time a whale is snacking on plankton right next to you below the deck.
