Kamchatka guide

This beautiful, mountainous, forested area is home to Kamchatka’s indigenous Even people. The region has two main settlements: Esso, population 2,000, is a mixture of Evens and ethnic Russians while Anavgay’s 600 inhabitants are mostly Even. They live by reindeer and horse herding, fishing and hunting, including for bears. In summer they get out to their hunters’ lodges and reindeer herds by horse and in winter by snowmobile. There are a couple of guest houses and locals who rent out rooms in both villages. They can also organize sledge, snowmobile or horse trips, although if you do not speak Russian it is better arrange this in Esso. A trip here is also worth it for their thermal springs, folk dance troupes and, of course, the surrounding nature. One bus makes the grueling ten-hour trip here from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky every day. The dirt track ends at Esso, leaving all settlements further north isolated and inaccessible in summer. In winter, however, Anavgay is the starting point for a network of temporary winter roads that stretches right to the far north of the peninsula.

Before the 17th century Kamchatka was inhabited solely by Koryaks, Itelmen, Ainu, Aleuts and Chukchi. The indigenous Even arrived a hundred and fifty years ago, migrating away from Russian expansion in Yakutia or from other indigenous groups who moved into Even territory after being pushed out of their own. The Itelmen and Ainu have now been assimilated into mainstream Russian society, although many still claim indigenous origins as it grants certain hunting and fishing privileges. The Aleuts were re-settled by the Soviet government to the remote Commander Islands where they live in one village to this day. The Even, though still herding reindeer and horses, have mostly forgotten their own language and are fairly "Russified". The reindeer-herding Koryaks have their own autonomous region which takes up the whole northern half of the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Chukchi live in the far north of that region. A few of the Koryaks from Olyutorsky and Penzhinsky Districts in the far north of Kamchatka have preserved their shamanistic religion and some of their traditional chants.

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the starting point of almost any trip to Kamchatka, is the archetypal Far Eastern city in many ways, encapsulating in one bleak town the Soviet thrust of industrialization versus nature. Nothing new has been built since the collapse of the USSR, leaving the breathtaking natural beauty that surrounds the city to contrast with crumbling, grey, five-storey apartment blocks, dirty, ice-bound streets and drifts of filthy snow burying abandoned cars and sometimes reaching second-floor windows. Don’t let it put you off though – most visitors leave almost as soon as they arrive to explore the Kamchatkan wilderness. Meanwhile, for those without enough time to get further afield, the volcanoes surrounding Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and lovely Avacha Bay are jaw-droppingly beautiful themselves. Local tour agencies can organize trekking, skiing, paragliding, heli-skiing and so on or the more adventurous can head out on their own if armed with local advice on routes.

The towering, oft-smoking Klyuchevskaya Sopka is the Northern Hemisphere’s tallest active volcano (4750 m). You might therefore expect the nearby village of Klyuchi to be at least slightly geared towards tourism. Not so. This collection of wooden cottages and dirt lanes is situated inside a closed area requiring a permit to enter and has not a single hotel, although a vulcanologist who has lived and worked here for over 35 years has a couple of dormitory rooms he rents out to the odd traveller that passes through. From the village there is a track leading to a vulcanologists' cabin at the base of the volcano. In winter you will probably need skis or a snowmobile to reach it though and in summer there are lots of bears in the area, so watch out! One bus a day makes the ten-hour journey to Klyuchi from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky along a road that starts off as low quality asphalt before petering out into a dirt track. On the way there is a river with no bridge: in winter the bus drives across the ice, in summer there is a ferry and for a while in spring and autumn neither bus nor ferry can cross!