Article about traveling to Chukotka

Chukotka - beautiful and terrible. Only for real life explorers!

Published: 06.09.2023 Heading: Trip reports

As much as the endless breathtaking landscapes are stunning, the logistics and service in Chukotka, which seem to be created out of spite, are just as disappointing and disgusting. But about the bad later, I'll start with the good.

The nature here is almost primitive, virgin and, despite the almost arctic latitudes, very rich. It seems that I have never seen such a number and variety of bird species anywhere. In the area of Cape Dezhnev above the sea, bird traffic can easily compete in terms of quantity and intensity with human traffic of the largest metropolises in the world. There, when driving on a boat at sea, you have to post a lookout so as not to accidentally run into a whale - there are also quite a few different species of them here - gray, bowhead, beluga whales. Coastal rocks are favored by sea lions; in the waters of the bays, wherever you look, there are heads of curious seals, fur seals and bearded seals. Sometimes you can see these graceful mammals chasing large fish, which often even jump out of the water in an attempt to escape. By the way, there is also plenty of fish - huge chum salmon or char can be seen right from the piers, and when you ask fishermen to sell some of their catch, they often give one or two fish for free - fish here is cheaper than pasta in the store and this is not a joke.

Tundra animals are not afraid and scurry everywhere you go. Gophers, weasels, hares, foxes. They say there are a lot of bears, including white ones, but in almost three weeks of wandering around Chukotka we never had the chance to meet them once.

Mushrooms are kind of crazy! In August, the entire tundra, all the swamps, all the slopes of the mountains are dotted with them. It would seem a completely inappropriate place: stones, in places slightly covered with moss, not even grass grows, and everywhere you look there is white all around, even with a sideways mow. Boletus mushrooms are no longer considered mushrooms at all; they, like weeds, cover everything. And this is provided that there are no worm-like mushrooms here in principle. Apparently, it’s too cold here for worms, but it’s just right for mushrooms, which are so capricious in central Russia. Inexplicable, but true.

People are for the most part friendly, helpful and hospitable. Where else is a person with whom you were flying on a plane and, in fact, barely acquainted, when you meet in the city, he will rush to help solve your problems, spending half a day on this and even “promoting” his girlfriend with whom he was going to meet? ))

Three times we approached fishermen on the seashore in different parts of Chukotka and asked to sell us fish for dinner. Twice, having learned that we only needed one or two fish, we received them completely free.

Or, for example, we met fishermen on ATVs in the forest, said hello, asked if we were going the right way, and in response received a covered clearing created especially for us, with a variety of snacks, thermoses with delicious tea and something more intoxicating - very healthy and encouraging in conditions when you walk for days in the rain, your boots are squelching, and ahead of you awaits the same hopeless rain, a damp tent and wet cold clothes that you put on yourself in the morning and again walk in the rain for tens of kilometers...

Yes, the weather in Chukotka is harsh and is a stumbling block for logistics and movement around the district. It is because of this that planning in Chukotka is a conditional thing. A person assumes, but the weather disposes. We waited three days for the flight from Anadyr to the village of Lavrentia, from which you can get to the most extreme point of Eurasia - Cape Dezhnev and several other interesting places. Small aircraft (An-26) fly low, land not by instruments, like older Boeings and other airbuses, but solely by visual contact of the pilots with the ground, and therefore it is the weather that determines the schedule of their flights. In addition, the runways at airports such as the one in the village of Lavrentiya are unpaved and, whether it’s raining or snowing, landing on them is extremely problematic. Add to this constant fog from the sea and strong, stormy winds and it becomes clear that waiting for your flight for several days or even weeks is quite common in Chukotka. We waited for departure at the Anadyr airport for two full days and half past three - on the third, we finally flew away in the evening. But here, in addition to objective reasons, there are also subjective ones - chaos, lack of system and disregard for passengers. More precisely, there is, of course, a system in all this bacchanalia, but it is not at all the same as what residents of modern cities are accustomed to. And the locals seem to be doing well in this system, simply because they have lived this way since childhood and have nothing to compare with, but visiting tourists have a lot of adventures.

It all starts with the fact that you arrive at the airport in the morning and stand in line for security (to just enter the airport, but this is the case everywhere). The airport of Anadyr (the regional center, for a second) is open from 9 am to 6 pm and only on weekdays (but this is not the case everywhere anymore!), the rest of the time it is closed. By 9 am, there is already a huge crowd at the entrance with backpacks, suitcases and bundles - many have morning flights, many want to catch a flight, and therefore their task is to be the first at the check-in counters in order to snatch a seat that may become available.

While you are going through security, you hear an announcement that your flight is delayed due to weather conditions at the arrival airport, information about departure will be available in an hour. Okay, go through the inspection without rushing, find yourself a waiting place. An hour later your flight is delayed for another hour, then another - until the evening. Before the airport closes, you are told that your flight is being postponed until tomorrow. The airport is closing, there is only one hotel in the village of Ugolny, and that one is always occupied, apartments with daily rates (from 12 to 20 thousand rubles per day) sell like hot cakes during the season. A person who is not used to adventures will give up at the prospect of spending the night on the street, but experienced people have found out everything - passengers of non-departed flights are accommodated completely free of charge in a hotel - the same one that is alone and in which there is never room. They exist, they’re just all booked in bulk by Chukotavia. But all this is known to locals and sophisticated people, everyone else must guess about it themselves, because there is no information or announcements about the fact of check-in at the hotel - the Chukotavia company considers it above its dignity to inform passengers about this - no problem, they themselves will find out somehow.

We cram into a huge crowd into the bus slot, backpacks and suitcases on our heads, and head to the hotel. There are a lot of people, those with children and pensioners are accommodated without a queue, so the procedure takes more than an hour. The woman at the reception desk seemed to have arrived here in a time machine from the Soviet past: a dissatisfied grimace on her face and a feeling of omnipotence in her voice and habits: I’ll accommodate you if I want, but I won’t! Somehow we are accommodated. Rooms for four people with bunk beds accommodate everyone mixed - men and women, and in fact this is not a hotel, but a hostel, but who will pay attention to such nuances here. The three of us are placed with an elderly Chukchee, Vasily, who has been staying here for a week. At the age of 75, he worked in the Putin (the season during which intensive industrial fishing is carried out) - the work is not easy even for young people, but the locals are not used to this - their whole life is connected with survival in difficult northern conditions, so even pensioners do not sit home and working. Now he is trying to fly home for a drop-off.

With my friend in misfortune Vasily in our hotel room in the village of Coal Mines

"Boarding" is a very common way to fly on local airlines. It seems too complicated for us, but the locals don’t have to choose, and besides, they’ve long been accustomed to it. The bottom line is that it is impossible to buy plane tickets in the summer. They run out in the first two to three hours from the start of sales in March or April, and even at this time buying them is a great art. If you suddenly feel the urge to fly, buy a ticket for the dates that are available, for example, for November, and then with this ticket come every day when the airport opens (preferably much earlier than the opening, so as to be the first) and wait for free seats - some kind of reservation canceled or someone didn’t show up for boarding. There is a ticket, there is a place - take off! But you can walk like this for more than one day, and taking into account the fact that planes fly to some settlements two or three times a week, and there are more than a dozen people besides you who want to fly on a transfer, it can take more than one week. But, sooner or later, you will fly away. This is Chukotka, baby!

We flew away with tickets for the dates we needed on the third day of waiting. The Anadyr airport has become like home - every nook and cranny of it has been studied and preserved in memory for many years. The plane is old, inside it looks more like a minibus than an airliner, but, thank God, it flies like a charm. The runway in the village of Lavrentiya is unpaved, covered in huge puddles - we landed right in a puddle. Naturally, there are no buses here - from the plane on foot to the airport building, which looks more like a barn, and here, to the exit to the village street, luggage was brought in a tractor bucket. Passport check by border guards + express survey (who are they? Where are they going? what route?), we go out the gate. We are met by the owner of the boat, with whom we agreed on a transfer by sea to the village of Uelen immediately upon arrival. He meets someone, but says that he will not be lucky today: there is a big wave at sea. Yes, and tomorrow will also be unlucky, maybe the day after tomorrow... The travel plan goes to hell and we, in order to somehow compensate for the two days of the upcoming “downtime,” decide to go to the village of Lorino, which according to the plan was supposed to be at the end of our trip. The shift bus is almost moving away from the stop near the airport and we have to overtake it and wave our hands to stop. We climb in with backpacks, there are no places, we stand in the aisle - the ride is a little over an hour, which by Chukotka standards is almost nothing. In Lorino, naturally, no one was waiting for us and therefore we had to search for a long time and almost frantically for housing, because there are no hotels here in principle, either a rented apartment or put up tents somewhere on the outskirts. The apartments have not been found for a long time, although the inspector of the national park, the head of the hunters’ office, and even the head of the village have been involved in the search. We are already leaning towards the option with tents, but suddenly there are two apartments to choose from - the day was a success!

Village Lorino

Lorino is the largest ethnic village in Chukotka. Sea hunters live and work here - they catch whales, walruses, seals, and fish. There is even a microscopic whale processing plant where whale meat and fat are packaged for shipment throughout the region, and some are smoked. In fact, whale hunting is prohibited all over the world, but for local residents (Chukchi and Eskimos) it is a means of subsistence. All their ancestors lived in this trade for thousands of years, so they are allowed to do this, but also for a reason - there are strict quotas that they must adhere to. Whales are not caught and butchered every day, so tourists are lucky to get to this event. We ended up both in the whale hunt itself and in cutting it up on the shore, but more on that later.

In the evening of the second day of my stay in Lorino, I called the owner of the boat, they say, how about a transfer to Uelen, tomorrow at 7 am we are going to leave by bus to Lavrentia. “It’s 7 in the morning,” he presses me, “you should be here at 3 in the morning tomorrow - according to the forecast, it will be calm at this time, then the wave will rise again.” The regular bus is cancelled, but he (his driver) agrees to take us personally at night, though not for 300 rubles. per person, as usual, but for 5 thousand. 5 thousand per person, not everyone. From seven it turns out to be 35 thousand. It's an hour's drive - well, this is Chukotka, these are the prices here, if anything.

At 3 o’clock in the morning we are in Laurentia, on the shore near the boat. There is no calm - the sea is quite stormy. “And according to the forecast there was a calm,” the “boatman” makes excuses, “we’ll wait, it should calm down.” 5 hours of waiting in the boat garage and finally we set sail. There is still no calm, but the wave is smaller. However, for those who sit on the bow of the boat, it doesn’t seem so - every 5-10 seconds we fly into the air and hit our back seats on the bench from being hit by an oncoming wave, our spine cracks and begs for mercy. It’s easier for those sitting in the back - the impacts there are not so hard.

The boat is fast, in just over 2 hours we cover a distance of almost 100 km. to Cape Dezhnev, landing geologists on an inhospitable shore along the way. “Just don’t forget to pick us up on the way back,” the eldest member of the group admonishes the boat captain, otherwise we’ll spend the night here...” Detailed explanations are not required - cold rain, fog, a narrow strip of pebbles mixed with crushed ice, rocks hanging from all sides and there seems to be no way out - you won’t live long in such a place.

Near Cape Dezhnev there is an Arctic-class cruise ship, but its tourists on bright inflatable boats are already leaving the cape and returning to the ship. We climb a steep slope and greet the border guard, who is vigilantly keeping watch in such a sensitive place. Besides us, there is another mini-group of tourists, with whom we constantly meet at airports, on planes, or in local villages. There is fog on the cape, with a tendency to thicken. But we are at the easternmost point not only of Russia, but of all of Eurasia - one of the most inaccessible points of the continent, and this fact enhances the sensations. We achieved our goal!

Cape Dezhnev

Actually, according to the program, we had to drop into the village of Uelen - the easternmost populated area of Russia and from there walk to Cape Dezhnev, and then to the Gulf of Lawrence, through which we would cross by boat to the village itself. The distance for a hike of 100 kilometers is not that great, but you would see the tundra in all its splendor, a cape, bears, and steep, inhospitable shores. A three-day delay in departure, plus two days of waiting for the boat, put an end to this idea - we only had three days left before the return flight, and we had 100 km to go. in three days over the difficult Chukotka terrain - a task, to put it mildly, difficult to implement. Therefore, we abandoned the trip, limiting ourselves to a one-day visit to the cape by boat. We also didn’t get to Uelen (and this was the only unfulfilled point of the program) - the captain flatly refused to take us there, arguing that two ocean currents converge near Uelen and now there, he called his friends in Uelen, a living hell. I must say that I did not deceive: the second group of tourists, parallel to us, persuaded their captain to swim, with great difficulty they succeeded, but because of three-meter waves they could not land on the shore, they sailed back, making a useless almost three-hour detour through the stormy sea . This is Chukotka, baby! The weather is everything here, your desires are nothing.

Seashore near Cape Dezhnev

But in terms of the emotions and impressions received, we were not left at a loss. On the way back we met with boats of sea hunters from the village of Lavrentiya and watched the capture of a whale, and then, in the village itself, we ended up cutting up this whale on the shore of the bay. The spectacle is not for the faint-hearted residents of modern megacities and, despite the fact that I have plenty of photographs of this cutting, I will not post them, so as not to offend someone’s vulnerable feelings with a bloody spectacle. I’ll just tell you in a few words about this action.

Whale Hunt

Sea hunters are the most respected people in the village. They learn the craft from childhood, going to sea with adults, and when they themselves become adults, they master the profession to perfection. And the profession is not as simple as it may seem to the ignorant and is even very dangerous - a whale, although not a predator, in the struggle for survival is capable of turning over and crushing a boat, so the hunter’s task is not only to catch the whale, but also not to become its victim himself.

When a whale is pulled ashore and begins to be butchered, the entire village rushes to this place with buckets and other containers. Each person receives almost as much meat as he needs for free. Once the cutting is completed, the bones and unassembled offal are shoveled by a bulldozer into the sea to feed its inhabitants. The entire shore is covered in blood and the remains of a whale carcass, but the next morning not a trace remains of this - the sea waves are absorbed by what is essentially part of it. This is life and everything here goes on as usual, just like tens, hundreds and thousands of years ago.

We also got some meat, which in the evening, in a rented apartment, was turned into fried steaks - everyone liked it. Some even took home a 5-kilogram piece of fresh whale meat. Fresh and smoked whale oil was also purchased from the Lorino processing plant. The smoked one tasted like lard, generously sprinkled with fish oil, but despite the specific taste, we ate everything. The raw fat, which, according to the locals, is supposed to be eaten in this raw form, was not included - a decent piece was left in the refrigerator in the apartment when we left.

Since the hike from the village of Uelen did not take place and we spent only one day on Cape Dezhnev, we had two free days left. There’s absolutely nothing to do in the village of Lavrentiya for so long! We decided to hit the road 25 km. and live in tents near the Lorinsky springs, where we had already come from Lorino for an hour, but the place seemed interesting and beautiful to us, so we went again. We set up tents and enjoyed nature for two days and two nights, picking and cooking mushrooms and evening soaks in the hot radon water of the springs with wine and snacks. Pure relaxation and pleasure, fortunately the weather was good.

Swimming in the Lorin springs

Our camp near the Lorin springs

Wine, cheese and porcini mushrooms for dinner

There was also a hike around Zolotogorye. It was planned for the second part of the trip, after Cape Dezhnev, but due to the fact that in April they could not buy air tickets to Lawrence for the required dates, they were forced to postpone the trip to the first part, and the cape to the second. Zolotogorye is a mountain range on the other side of the Anadyr Estuary (as seen from Anadyr), but on the same side as the airport. Tourists rarely come here, mostly fishermen and hunters, and even those we met only once.

Zolotogorye

Out of 5 days, only the first day was sunny, then it began to rain, which fell with varying degrees of intensity all days. The delivery vehicle took us to Gudym - towns and mines of the Strategic Missile Forces destroyed by explosions (after Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Treaty on the Reduction of Strategic Nuclear Arms, these mines and the towns with military personnel serving them were blown up and today they are mountains of twisted concrete - a very sad sight), We continue on foot. The terrain is not easy, for an ordinary hiker accustomed to mountains or the Central Russian upland it is completely disgusting - a mixture of swampy tundra covered with bushes, which is still a “pleasure” to wade through, and rocky low hills, often also with swampy soil. There are many streams and small rivers, but most often you can cross them on rocks. There are also fords, but they are not frequent.

The goal of our hike is the gold mining village of Zolotogorye, which was alive with life back in the 90s of the last century. Now it is abandoned - there are many still preserved houses with furniture and indoor plants dried in pots, toys, books and mountains of abandoned equipment - right up to BELAZ trucks, as well as just scrap metal of unknown purpose. We reached it on the third day and examined it in quite heavy rain. Everyone’s feet were wet, even in the best trekking boots, so on the way back we crossed the fords without taking off our shoes. And the rain intensified, especially on the fourth night - it poured like buckets all night. Striving to quickly reach civilization, on the last day we walked almost 30 km, and finally even managed to look into the Portal (as the locals call it) - the only surviving mine, carved horizontally into a 2 km long mountain. It has a lot of office space, ventilation equipment, a narrow-gauge railway - apparently there was a warehouse for missiles, which were then installed in vertical silos for combat duty. But they were all blown up.

We spent the last day in Anadyr. The city is small - you can really walk around it all in a day, see everything that is there, including the museum, market, shops, and buy souvenirs. It gives the impression of being cozy and quite comfortable, although with its own specifics. Red fish and caviar are cheaper here than in Kamchatka, where everything in this area is monopolized. So all tourists fly loaded with these gifts of nature.

SUMMARY. Chukotka is a very interesting region, but very specific. There is practically no tourist infrastructure here, the level of comfort is much below average, and prices, on the contrary, are not just above average - they are the highest in Russia. But if you have the spirit of exploring the world, a reasonable amount of adventurism, if your comfort zone is wide and allows you to enjoy things that are not considered the norm in the average statistical sense - you will like Chukotka! If you like everything to go according to plan and the slightest deviations from it cause you discomfort, if you are accustomed to certain standards of comfort and are not ready to sacrifice them, Chukotka is definitely contraindicated for you!

ANNOUNCEMENT. If you are interested in Chukotka, our Travel Calendar contains tour program to Chukotka in the summer of 2025, there are also many tours to other, no less interesting regions of Russia, if you are interested, check out Travel calendar or subscribe to our telegram channel so as not to miss calendar updates.

The article uses photographs by Evgeny Androsov, Victoria Shatalova and Viktor Polyakov.

More photos from the trip to Chukotka:

Sunset at Lorinsky springs