We are undeniably passionate about the Arctic. Probably to a ridiculous level... In fact, rather than sating our appetites for the high north, our eight individual trips in recent years to some of the remotest polar destinations in the world have actually intensified our fascination with Arctic travel. 

To date, we have journeyed to 18 destinations above the Arctic Circle in countries including the Russian Federation, Svalbard (the northernmost inhabited settlement in the world), Norway, Greenland and Canada. As we often jokingly commented, "Next Stop, the North Pole" - which incidentally became the title of our 2023 blog.

Bizarre as it may seem to most of our family, friends, and acquaintances, we are especially attracted to the extreme Arctic regions of Siberian Russia. We unashamedly fell in love with Russia, its vivid, complex history, its ethnic diversity, languages and culture, and the sheer wildness of its vast landscapes. And we love the people; so different from us but so very similar. We have made many long-standing friendships in this surprisingly welcoming nation. Interestingly, we also developed an intense passion for its extreme Arctic climate, environment and fascinating polar geography. We were so committed to returning to Russia that I embarked on several years of studying Russian language. Yes, Russia had really gotten under our skin.....

Over just five years, we made six individual trips to Russia and several others to former Soviet satellite states, now part of Central Asia. Our adventures to some of its most remote regions gave us an invaluable appreciation of the magnitude and diversity of this fascinating yet little-known (to the West) country, the largest on the planet and a post-Soviet nation finally emerging from the darkness of a long, cruel Cold War. How fortunate were we?

Devastatingly for us, Russia was rudely thrown off our travel agenda after our extraordinary 2020 trip to the Anabar Region of Arctic Yakutia - and just before COVID stopped all worldwide travel for almost three years. Our efforts to return to the Russian Federation were further impeded when the Russian government refused to issue visas to Australian citizens, a perplexing decision that, to this day, we have no idea of the reason. After all, at the time, even US and New Zealand citizens could readily obtain Russian visas.

And then there was Ukraine... And for Australians, it was and still is not practical for tourists to travel to Russia from Australia, the final blow being our government's Foreign Affairs travel warning for the Russian Federation of "Do Not Travel" - meaning it would be impossible to obtain travel insurance.  

Tragically, the world has regressed into another Cold War situation. 

Russia comprises over 53% of the Arctic Ocean coastline. Approximately two and a half million of Russia's inhabitants live in Arctic territory, accounting for nearly half of the population living in the Arctic worldwide.

And when travel to Russia was off the agenda, we were seriously running out of polar destinations to which we could travel. Or more to the point where we wanted to travel...

In late 2022, we had to acknowledge that Russia was off our travel agenda, at least for the following year, perhaps longer. Somewhat reluctantly, we decided to make a long and complex journey to several destinations close to or above the Arctic Circle. Located on the European side of the world, they included Svalbard, Norway, Faroe Islands, Iceland and the west coast of Greenland. For many years, Alan had wanted to visit the Faroe Islands, and Svalbard, the northernmost township in the world, sounded exotic and interesting. And we had always wanted to visit Greenland. We were concerned that Iceland sounded like a partying place for the European wealthy - but then again, it was on our way to Greenland, and we thought that not visiting the island would be foolhardy.

We would have to be honest. Our 2023 travels were disappointing. Svalbard and Greenland were interesting - especially the more northern locations of Greenland. But even then, they were far more tourist-oriented than we had ever imagined. Sadly, we found the Faroe Islands to be somewhat superficial and underwhelming, and Norway we found pretty boring - that is, pretty and boring. Iceland was, to our dismay, even more packed with tourists than we could ever imagine - 3 million tourists in a country of just 380,000 people. 

Disappointingly, the culture and way of life in these locations were not all that dissimilar to that of our home country of Australia. Of course, not everyone would agree - but for us travellers-of-off-the-beaten-track-destinations, they were not particularly interesting. 

On the other hand, many tourists we met in these locations loved them. 

We questioned ourselves. Had we done too much travel? Were we expecting too much? Did we just dislike the drudgery of the overly full flights, lack of service, and unfriendly European travel? Or, more to the point, were many of our mind-blowing adventures in Extreme Arctic Russia so powerful that anything else seemed underwhelming? We feared the latter.....

Admittedly, our 2023 journey was much tainted by our being ill with a recurring flu-type virus and persisting gastric problems for nearly all of our trip. Furthermore, Alan had collapsed due to dehydration issues on several occasions and, coupled with a bad fall, splitting the back of his head open, was hospitalised twice during our travels. It didn't help our cause either when Iceland Air lost Alan's luggage containing all his winter weather gear on our flight to Greenland - and could not retrieve it for seven days... It was tough travelling.  

During our years of travel, like all people we had experienced the usual highs and lows of overseas trips - but nothing compared with our 2023 journey. The entire trip was a case of "What could go wrong, did go wrong. And VERY wrong....". We arrived back in Australia disappointed, tired and still sick... And many kilos lighter... 

So, with some trepidation, we planned another Arctic trip for 2024 - this time, the High Arctic of Canada. Thankfully, we didn't admit it then, but our hearts were not in tune with undertaking more non-Russian travel. Or any travel, for that matter.

We longed, however, to be back in the Arctic; unsurprisingly, Canada was an obvious choice for our travels. After all, some 40% of the country is within what is regarded as the Arctic North. A country covering a huge area with a vast diversity of sub-Arctic and Arctic regions, it appeared to offer a particularly wide array of interesting and exotic destinations in largely Inuit-owned lands. But would it be sufficiently interesting for a five to six-week trip? 

We had never travelled to Canada. And I am somewhat ashamed to admit that we often snottily commented on those choosing to travel there as being attracted to "vanilla" destinations. More accurately, we meant they were downright boring... Canadians are often referred to as being "similar to Australians".  Meant in the nicest way, in that they were friendly and hospitable. But after our near-disastrous 2023 travels, we wondered whether this sort of similarity would be equally uninteresting...

It was hard to get our heads around drafting an itinerary to Canada. We were undergoing major house repair work on the damage caused by a ferocious hailstorm the previous November, the work extending almost up to the time we left for our trip. 

And I was flat out with studying Russian language, lessons and assignments, as well as trying to write up a huge 2023 blog. And with our lack of certainty about Russian travels and our miserable recollections of our last trip, it was difficult to get excited about either undertaking. The tedious task of researching, planning and organising our coming trip was left largely in Alan's hands. And as usual, he did a fantastic job.

Having never travelled to Canada, it was difficult to know where to start. I had seen an advertisement for a short tour that sounded particularly interesting - even to people who dislike tours. Run by Arctic Range Adventure under the umbrella group of Tour Radar, the tour involved an eight-day ice road journey along the famous Dempster Highway from Whitehorse in the Yukon on the north-eastern side of Canada, following the Alaskan border north through Dawson City, Eagle Plains, then across the border to the Northwest Territories to Inuvik, and eventually the Inuit hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic Sea. 

The tour sounded great. The journey would involve driving through more than 1,200 km of splendid mountainous terrain with interesting opportunities to explore historic gold rush townships, stay at remote trucking stops and visit fascinating polar pingo land formations* before arriving at the final destination of the Inuit hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk on the frozen Arctic Ocean. The trip also promised excellent opportunities for viewing the Aurora Borealis - or Northern Lights. It sounded like a good starting point for us as we could fly directly from Sydney to Vancouver before catching a flight to Whitehorse. 

* Pingos are intra-permafrost conical hills. They are formed in permafrost regions when unfrozen underground water collects and then refreezes. The expansion due to the freezing process forms mounds reaching as high as 1,000 m. The highest concentration in the world is at Tuktoyaktuk.

We were also particularly keen to visit the far north-eastern territory of Nunavut. Until we began organising our itinerary, shamefully I had never heard of Nunavut. The northernmost part of the Canadian territories, it forms most of the Canadian archipelago and comprises a mostly Inuit population. Interestingly for us polar-loving people, it is also home to the northernmost Canadian settlements of Grise Fiord and Resolute. 

Our main issue was the extraordinary cost involved. None of the settlements in Nunavut is connected by road, and airfares to such remote locations cost thousands. And that was to say nothing of accommodation costs... The cost of just one night's accommodation in Resolute was an eye-watering CAD 1,000 or CAD 500 per person... Bizarrely, the price was based on the number of people booking, not the room.

Again, a not-quite-so-logical conversation arose. "This could be our last trip to the Arctic. Perhaps we should just try to forget the monumental costs involved?" It was a plausible argument at the ages of 85 and 70. But we have said the same thing for the last eight years...  

And no matter how expensive it was, we knew we had to journey to Resolute. A tiny Inuit hamlet on Cornwallis Island and at a staggering latitude of 74°41' N, it is the second northernmost settlement in Canada and one of the northernmost permanently inhabited locations in the world. Resolute (also known as Resolute Bay) is also a primary "jumping off point" for those brave and hardy souls travelling to the North Pole... Our trip was evolving. It was by then very much "Destination Resolute". And it was becoming very exciting...

We did, however, decide to modify our trip to exclude flying north from Resolute to Grise Fiord. Just a very short one-and-a-half-hour flight would cost us another whopping CAD 3,000. Furthermore, flights to and from these destinations did not fly daily, offering complex connection situations if there was bad weather - for which this polar region was renowned. We would have dearly loved to travel to Grise Fiord but even we had to admit that the costs were becoming ridiculous. 

So, our trip would begin by flying to Vancouver and then Whitehorse, where we would undertake our tour to Tuktoyaktuk. We would then return to Whitehorse and fly west to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, where we would spend a few days before flying northeast to Rankin Inlet on Hudson Bay.  "Why Rankin Inlet?". Once again, it was on the way to the transport hub of Iqaluit and the capital of Nunavut, where we would fly north to Arctic Bay and further north to Resolute. 

Early in our travel plans, we had read in a well-presented blog that the capital city of Iqaluit, was a great place to get to know Nunavut. The author even suggested there was no need to travel to the very expensive remote north of Nunavut if you could spend time in the city. We took her advice and booked our return flight via Iqaluit, where we would spend five nights before we headed southeast to Ottawa and finally back to Vancouver, where we would catch our flight back to Sydney.

Our journey was starting to take bones. And especially for "very right-handed me", it was a clockwise tour.... It was, in fact, a circumnavigation of the entire country and a trip that would cover some 41,300 km - further than travelling the circumference of the planet Earth.

Little did we know at that stage that our journey would not be quite the trip we had so meticulously planned...