It was no secret that Alan and I had become ardent devotees of Russian travel. After all, following a brief visit to Moscow and St Petersburg in 2015, we had made six separate trips to Russia within a space of five years. Not only had our journeys fostered a love of the history, the people and their culture, the geography and even the severity of its extreme climate, our Russian adventures had provided us with an enormous appreciation of the magnitude and diversity of a fascinating country; the largest on earth and a post-Soviet nation finally emerging from the darkness of a crazily long Cold War. 

To our surprise, it only took our very first visit to the Kamchatka Peninsula and the northern oblast of Magadan in 2018, to find we were desperately keen to travel further north and explore the extreme polar regions of Siberia. An affinity that became a fervent passion. And then reality.

In 2018, we made our first winter voyage by ice roads (zimniki) in the Extreme Arctic North to Pevek, one of the northernmost inhabited settlements in Russia, right on the Arctic Ocean of the remote Chukotka Okrug (province).

It was a huge adventure.

In the following years, we made even more mind-blowing trips along the Bering Coast of Chukotka, and also to the politically fragile regions of the Russian North Caucasus, followed by a trip across the Russian continent on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Our last Russian trip was a monumental 3,000 km winter journey in 2020 driving along the zimniki of Yakutia to the Anabar region on the Arctic Ocean, the furthest north we had ever travelled. We were hooked on the Russian Extreme Arctic. In winter, that is....

We had made wonderful friends in many parts of Siberia. In some instances we had stayed in their family homes as we travelled. We had also remained in close contact with our guides and travel agents with whom we had developed close and long lasting friendships. So committed we were to our Russian travels, I had even embarked on a mission to study Russian language through a lecturer from St Petersburg University. Russia was not just a passion. It had become a full-time commitment.  

We were told that no one travels to Extreme Arctic Russia. It is just too hard. Well, we had and we loved it. And after our 2020 trip, we had excitedly planned future trips to some of the remotest northern destinations in the Chukotka Okrug.  These were routes which had never been travelled by foreign travellers and journeys which would need to be for safety reasons, in the almost unstoppable Russian Burlak trucks - and of course, in convoy. It was sensationally exciting.

What we had witnessed during those years of Arctic travel was to completely shatter any future prospects of normal tourist travel. We were self-confessed addicts of Russian polar journeys. And there was no going back.

Or so we thought....

And then there was COVID....

We arrived home from our 2020 Russian trip on one of the last scheduled flights out of Tokyo before the country closed down because of the COVID pandemic. Like everyone at the time, we had no idea the impact this outbreak would have on the world, let alone global travel which of course came to an abrupt halt shortly after our return. And even then, we thought the lock down would last for just a short time. Never in our wildest dreams did we consider it could last - at least for us - for a very long three years.

COVID became rampant world-wide. It spared no prisoners. Lockdowns around the globe, including Australia became part of a new normal. Needless to say, overseas travel was well and truly off the agenda.  In March 2020, Australia closed its borders. Our planet as we knew it had literally turned on its head.

To further complicate matters, Russia ceased issuing visas to Australian citizens. Even if we could travel to Russia by covert means through other countries, we could not obtain entry visas. To this day, we have no idea of the reason behind the Russian government's actions of the time. After all, even the USA and New Zealand could obtain visas for their citizens..... 

To top off our travel woes, there was Ukraine; the Russian invasion of the country in February 2022 being the final blow to our Russian travel aspirations. 

To our dismay, Russian travel was now well and truly off our agenda, and we were forced to re-think our future travel. At Alan's age of 85 and me advancing to 70 years of age, we had to be realistic. To our disappointment, we had no option than to look toward other destinations; most desirably of course, those in the extreme polar north. And of course, sooner than later....  We joked that we had invested so much money on sourcing and buying the very best Arctic clothes we could, that we needed to use them to justify their purchase....

But it was not funny. We were devastated that we could not return to Russia. In our home country of Australia, it was not politically correct to even mention the country. Reluctantly, we began to review earlier plans to travel to Svalbard, the Faroe Islands and in particular, Greenland. They certainly appealed as interesting and more off-the-beaten-track destinations. And they were in the polar north. In the past we had contemplated travel to Iceland but decided that it was far too tourist-oriented for us. But as we had to travel there en route to Greenland, we decided it would be a pity not to at least make a short visit. So now, we had four main destinations: Svalbard, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland. 

Post-COVID, everyone was travelling. And airfares were crazily priced. It didn't help either that the more inexpensive, but excellent Chinese carriers such as our usual China Eastern Airlines were totally grounded following the COVID outbreak. Competitive flight prices were non-existent.

In June 2022, Alan managed to secure two Business Class Sydney-Frankfurt return airfares with Vietnam Airlines at a very competitive price. Frankfurt, we agreed was a major transport hub and a convenient base for our flights to Copenhagen and Oslo; cities we would use as platforms for our shorter leg flights to our main destinations. 

Our 2023 travels were finally evolving. But in the northern winter, travel was complex, and our journey convoluted because of restricted flight routes to some of these more remote locations. And in most destinations, we had no option other than to book short, small group tours; something we that we would rarely contemplate. 

Alan organised all of our travel, spending literally months meticulously pouring over hundreds of flight routes, travel and accommodation options. It was exhausting. All up, he booked some twenty different flights, seventeen different hotels, as well as several tours. Our coming tour was looking like a spaghetti maze. And poor Alan was not looking much better.

The trip was fraught, and we knew it. Contracting COVID or missing any one of the numerous flights would have been catastrophic. And that was to say nothing of our distaste for group travel. 

A difficult and potentially disastrous journey had begun before we had even left.....