Arctic

Even in the dead of winter, the Arctic skies are regularly lit up by the incredible aurora borealis – shimmering curtains of greenish light streaked with flares of purple, red and blue. Created by charged particles from the solar wind entering our atmosphere, there’s simply no other spectacle on earth to match it.

A further Arctic paradox is that the lands beyond 60°N, barren and ravaged by the elements, are actually filled with wildlife – from caribou and polar bears to reindeer and Arctic foxes, along with countless species of marine and bird life (but no penguins, as Arctic residents often have to tell visitors with a sigh). And then there are the endless evergreen forests of the taiga, which scientists now realize are the true lungs of the world, even more vital than tropical rainforests.

It’s no surprise that a region containing so many contradictions is also a place of extremes – and therefore exactly the sort of environment in which Brown + Hudson excels. Whether you choose to travel north from Russia, Norway, Greenland, Canada or Alaska – and whether your goal is to track wolves on the tundra, spot whales from Zodiacs or sip champagne at the North Pole – we know the best people to fly you in and out, navigate the ice floes and guide you over the most rugged terrain. By dog sled or snowmobile, sealskin kayak or nuclear-powered icebreaker, we’ve got the right connections to get you where you want to go. We can even take you under the ice cap aboard a Russian submarine (where you can ask the captain, over glasses of vodka, what he thought of The Hunt for Red October). 

The northern vastness inevitably inspires adventurous travellers to think big. Hope to climb Mt. Barbeau, the highest peak in Canada’s Nunavut territory? We’ll put an expedition together. Want to fly by helicopter to the North Pole? We’ll land you on polar ice cap so you can watch the sun travel in a circle and swear you feel the earth tilting on its axis. In short, the Arctic for us is a blank canvas on which you decide what sort of mark you want to leave: snowshoe trails among windswept pines, dog-sled tracks across the endless pack ice, or a single line of footprints in virgin snow.