Go ahead, tell your girlfriend you want to go to Siberia, I dare you. She might tell you to stay there, but it could be worth it if you have the courage and stamina to make the 15-day trek through the land of 160 volcanoes. The crazy kids at KE Adventure Travel start the first tour July 20 taking groups of eight to 16 people to Kamchatka in eastern Russia’s Siberian wilderness.
Let me guess, this doesn’t sound like your idea of a vacation. It won’t help that you need to bring a sleeping bag and fly into Petropavlovsk (nope, JetBlue doesn’t go there), but the payoff is that you’ll see sights that few naked eyes have ever seen. Such as? Well, you’ll see the pools of boiling mud and colorful rock formations of Mutnovsky, the Vodopadnaya waterfall, the Alaid lava cones, the Valley of the Geysers and the volcanic oddity known as the “Claw.” You’ll visit Gorley with its famous 11 craters, including one that’s now a lake of acid, and Avachinsky, which hasn’t erupted since the ’90s! And imagine the views after you’ve climbed a peak that’s over 10,000 feet above sea level.
It’s not all hiking and camping, however, as you’ll traverse the frozen tundra on all-terrain vehicles and explore Avacha Bay by boat. You’ll also have six nights in a hotel, but if the eight days of hiking across lava flows and cinder fields leave you sore, you’ll think you’ve reached heaven when you soak in the pond-sized hot spring in desolate Dachnye.
Okay, summer in the Hamptons this is not, but can you think of an experience in your life that would match this? I mean, another article with this many exotic names and my “spell check” will threaten to go on strike! Conquering the Siberian “Ring of Fire” — six of whose volcanoes are World Heritage Sites — is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that will challenge your body but ignite your soul.
And you never know, with all that physical exercise, you might come back looking like Ivan Drago.
Photos by ViaShu courtesy of Flickr.