Wrangel Island

Wrangel Island is one of Russia's most remote reserves, and it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2004. This once-in-a-lifetime excursion to the "end of creation," as one 19th-century visitor put it, is well deserved: Visitors must first get special permission from the authorities. Second, getting here is difficult – guests arrive by helicopter in the winter and board an icebreaker in the summer.

On both sides of the 180th meridian is an island with a sizeable area. Despite, and in many ways because of, the hard climate, the federally controlled reserve remains a wildlife haven. Wrangel Island features the most polar bear lairs in the world, as well as the largest population of Pacific walruses.

Wrangel Island was also the last refuge of wooly mammoths, according to paleontologists; a dwarf species lived here 6,000 years after the extinction of mammoths in all other regions of the world - mammoth tusks twisted into spirals may still be seen here.

Location: Near Chukchi Sea

Area: 7,600 km²

Max length: 150 km