Back to London

Bears are the symbol of Kamchatka and one gets constantly warned about them. The biggest bear is however the bureaucratic one. Kamchatka is "where Russia begins": a border region (the one closest to the USA) and a military zone which until the early nineties was prohibited even to most Russians. This translates in an enormous amounts of permits from as many different agencies and some interesting times trying to navigate various offices and questionings.

In contrast to this Kamchatkans on the street are extremely hospitable and go out of their way to help. One even gave us all of his footage of the Commander Islands when he found out we were banned from filming on the islands!

We know we haven't updated our website as much as we wanted while in the field. Now that we are back we are working hard to update our website putting in the photo galleries and preparing the resource guide. Most of all we are editing our film for the SES Neville Shulman film award thanks to which we were able to go on this awesome trip.