Kuril Necklace, South to North — 12-day expedition

The ferry leaves Korsakov in the evening — ahead lie twelve days on three southern Kuril Islands, one continuous arc from Kunashir through Shikotan to Iturup. This is the full southern chain as the ferries and weather let you travel it, not a single-island deep dive. One of the rarest routes in Russia, served by only a handful of scheduled crossings a week.

Twelve days gather around three islands in order, south to north:

Kunashir (days 1–5) — to the Ainu, the Black Island. You arrive by overnight ferry from Korsakov and spend four full days on the island: the coastal walk to Chertov Palets (Devil's Finger) rock and Chertovy Vorota (Devil's Gates) arch; Golovnin Caldera with Boiling and Hot lakes and mud cauldrons reaching 100 °C; the fumarole field of Mendeleev Volcano with therapeutic bathing in Kisly Stream; the Stolbovskaya eco-trail out to Cape Stolbchaty, whose basalt hexagonal columns rose from the ocean floor fifty million years ago.

Shikotan (days 6–8) — the quietest of the three islands. You cross from Yuzhno-Kurilsk to Shikotan by plashkout (shallow-draught barge) and walk the slopes of Mount Shikotan, an extinct volcano and the island's highest point. Snezhkova Bay from Krabozavodskoye village: 20 km there and back through stone-birch forest and juniper-covered hills. Cape End-of-the-World — a forty-metre cliff over the Pacific, named in 1946 by the Yuri Yefremov expedition; Bezymyannaya (Nameless) Bay at dawn, when scattered islets catch the pink light.

Iturup (days 9–12) — the largest and most volcanic of the three. Jeep tour to the base of active Baransky Volcano — mineral streams, turquoise lakes, thermal springs. Belye Skaly: a thirty-kilometre wall of pale pumice along the east coast, honey-pink at sunset. The Zharkie Vody thermal springs on the Sea of Okhotsk. Kasatka Bay, with traces of Ainu settlement and the 1855–1945 Japanese period. The Yankito lava plateau, where frozen flows shape an unearthly coastline. A final morning at a volcano-view spa before the flight back to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

Group of up to twelve, lodging in trusted guesthouses on each island (Iceberg on Kunashir, Ostrovnoy on Shikotan, Kasatka on Iturup), local guides throughout, border zone permit processing included. Best time: mid-June to end of September, while the regular Kuril navigation is running.

The Kurils are one of those places that re-draw your internal geography. Twelve days on islands that still smell of volcano and sea, where history surfaces in layers through the grass, where the horizon is occupied by something working — a vent, a cone, a flock of cormorants going by low over the water. The boat tickets are the bottleneck for this route; book early. Reach out as soon as you have a target week — ticket reservations happen first.