Bears of Kamchatka

Photographed By Percy Fernandez

IWhere is Kamchatka?

To say it is very far and located in a remote corner of the planet is funny. Ask the Russians and they will tell you it is very far. Ask the Americans, they may tell you even though it might be a three and a half hour flight from Anchorage, they will arrive the next day in Kamchatka as they have to cross the international date line.

It is an 8 hour flight from Moscow, that is if you are on a direct flight. On my way in, I stopped at Vladivostok, Russia’s far east trading post briefly before I boarded a plane to Petroplavitsky, capital of Kamchatka peninsula. It is a 3hr 45 minutes flight from there. Kamchatka is one of the most remotest and beautiful peninsula, as long as California state and in size as big as the UK and the Netherlands put together. The Sea of Okhotsk hugs its western coast while the Pacific Ocean on its east and the Bering Strait stands in between the Russia and Alaska, that was sold to the US in 1867.

The Kurile Lake is located on the south of Kamchatka, which is a day’s drive from the capital city and you enter the Kronotsky Reserve to see the brown bears feasting on the salmon who arrive at the lake to spawn after having left the lake a couple of years ago swimming downstream first into the Sea of Okhotsk and later into the Pacific before finding their way back upstream to Kurile lake in what is surely a natural wonder and and annual spectacle.