Kamchatka

The flight into Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky takes nine hours from Moscow and crosses six time zones, which is one way of understanding how far this peninsula sits from anything recognizable as European Russia. But the real orientation happens when the clouds part on approach and the volcanoes appear below the wing — not one or two but a whole horizon of them, their cones sharp and snow-capped, some trailing thin columns of smoke into the cold Pacific air. Koryaksky was actively exhaling the morning I landed. I pressed my face against the scratched aircraft window and felt my entire sense of scale recalibrate.

The Valley of Geysers is accessible only by helicopter — there are no roads into the Kronotsky Nature Reserve — and the helicopter ride is itself a kind of argument for the place. You skim above taiga and tundra, above rivers running thick with salmon in August, above nothing at all for long stretches, and then the valley opens below you: two kilometers of steaming calderas and geysers and hot springs, the ground in colors that ground should not be — saffron, rust, verdigris, ash-white. I stepped off the helicopter into the steam and the smell of sulfur and the sound of water pressure seeking release. A brown bear had been spotted in the valley that morning; we were advised to walk in groups and make noise. We tried to make noise and then fell silent because the place was too loud already, or too strange, or both.

Mutnovsky volcano, two hours south of Petropavlovsk, can be reached by jeep and then on foot, and the walk into the crater is the kind of thing I have tried to describe to people who have not done it and failed. The crater floor steams from a dozen vents. The smell is sulfur and ice simultaneously. The colors in the rock face — yellow and blue and a dark red that looks charred — are produced by the hydrothermal process eating the stone. You pick your way between fumaroles and try not to think about what the crust beneath you is doing. There is absolutely nowhere else like it on Earth.

The bear watching on the rivers during the salmon run in August requires nothing more than a guide with a good eye and patience. We waited at a bend in the Kambalnaya River while a female bear and two cubs methodically worked the shallows, and for forty minutes I forgot to take notes, forgot to photograph, forgot everything except the fact of being there while the bear pinned a salmon with one paw and the volcano to the southeast trickled smoke into the afternoon sky. The ratio of humans to animals in Kamchatka runs so heavily toward the animals that a certain humility becomes appropriate, even pleasant. In Petropavlovsk’s fish market that evening, I ate crab claws the length of my forearm and barely spoke.

When to go: July through September is the only practical window — Kamchatka’s winters are severe and most infrastructure shuts down. August is ideal for bears and salmon. July for wildflowers and helicopter trips into the nature reserves. Book far ahead; logistics here require planning.