Iturup Light — 3 days on Iturup

The plane begins its descent into Yasny Airport — the only scheduled gateway to Iturup. Below the wing, a volcanic ridge: smoking cones, narrow coastlines, the dark water of the Sea of Okhotsk on one side and the Pacific on the other. Forty minutes after take-off from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk you step out at Kurilsk — the island's administrative centre, population around two thousand. Three days is not a quick look but a dense programme built around a volcano, thermal waters and Belye Skaly — compressed for a short visit.

Three days gather around three volcanic points on the island:

Yankito lava plateau and Vannochki thermal baths — day one, near Kurilsk. Yankito is a frozen lava flow that surfaced many thousands of years ago: black rock terraces with a trail running across them, and sheer drops to the Sea of Okhotsk looking out at the bay of the same name. A few kilometres away lie the open-air Vannochki baths — natural hollows in the rock, filled with hot mineral water, under the sky. You come at sunset, when steam rises off the water and the colour in the bay goes out.

Baransky Volcano and Kasatka Bay — day two, a jeep tour across the island. Baransky is an active stratovolcano 1,132 metres high, and at its base runs the «Boiling River»: a stream heated by underground vents to eighty or ninety degrees; where it mixes with cold river water, bathing pools form. Kasatka Bay is a wide inlet on the Pacific coast with sea stacks rising out of the water like narrow spires, and a clear shallows through which you can see the kelp.

Belye Skaly and Zharkie Vody thermal springs — day three. Belye Skaly is a wall of pale pumice about twenty-eight kilometres long, running along the east coast; at sunset the stone turns honey-pink, in the morning a cold milky white. Below the cliffs — black sand with titanomagnetite grains; a coin placed on it will stick. «Zharkie Vody» is a hot mineral bath a few paces from the shoreline, under open sky: a hundred degrees in the water against six in the ocean surf.

Group of up to eight, accommodation at the Kasatka Guesthouse in Kurilsk, local guide throughout, border zone permits included. Air ticket and entry fees for Zharkie Vody (₽1,500) and the Boiling River (₽3,000) are paid separately. Season: 11 June to 29 October.

Three days is a short but complete entry to Iturup: one of the rarest routes in Russia, served by only a handful of scheduled flights a week. Guests come home with the smell of sulphur in their clothes and the sense of having stood on a working volcano in the morning. We hold a working relationship with the Aurora ticket office in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and book your seats before they hit general sale. Drop us a line — typical reply time under an hour.