Plan to arrive early enough to discover one of the world’s most beautiful capitals, Ottawa, Canada, home to over a dozen national museums and galleries.

While taking the charter flight from Ottawa to Resolute, look below and admire boreal forest changing to tundra and then to ice. By evening you’ll be above the Arctic Circle and aboard the icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov.

Radstock Bay has an impressive archaeological site and is beside Caswell Towers, used as a polar bear observation point. Here we’ll also find one of the best Thule sites in the Arctic which gives us insight into how the pre-Inuit people survived and lived. Just offshore at the western end of Devon Island is Beechey Island. There, on a stony beach, stand three grave markers; solemn reminders of the lives lost during Sir John Franklin’s search for the Northwest Passage. As you approach Beechey Island, listen to presentations about Franklin and his expedition.

Prince Leopold Island is located within Lancaster Sound and is home to an impressive migratory bird sanctuary classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Hop on a Zodiac and explore the cliffs of sandstone and limestone that rise up 800 feet above sea level surrounding the island to spot some of the 375,000 migratory birds here including, thick-billed Murre, northern fulmars, black-legged kittiwakes and snow buntings, to name but a few. This is also a good environment to see polar bears.

During these sea days the crew will be icebreaking, allowing passengers to take helicopter rides to sightsee, looking for opportunistic landing possibilities on the top of Prince of Wales Island and Victoria Island. Witnessing this powerful icebreaker navigates the ice pack and feeling the vibration is a spectator sport in itself.

Mercy Falls is part of Aulavik National Park, a polar desert located on Banks Island in the Northwest Territories. Known for its access to the Thomsen River, one of the most northerly navigable rivers in North America, this park is one of the most remote and least visited in all of Canada and protects approximately 12,000 km of Arctic Lowlands at the northern end of the island.

At Sachs Harbour, the most northerly permanent settlement in the Northwest Territories, go ashore and visit with the people of this very small community. The community was named after the ship 'Mary Sachs' of the Canadian Arctic Expedition of 1913. In 1929, a permanent settlement was established when three Inuit families settled here to trap.

In 1953, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police set up a detachment post and people lived a very traditional lifestyle hunting muskox, caribou and polar bear. Today the community's economy is based primarily on hunting and trapping and to a lesser degree on tourism.

The hills have been smoking for centuries. In 1850, Robert McClure, searching for Franklin, sent a shore party to investigate smoke. Could it be fires built by Franklin or his men? The shore party discovered smoke rising from vents in the ground. They returned to the ship with a sample of the smoldering rock, which, when placed on McClure’s desk, burned a hole through it.

Be on the lookout for Snow and Brant Geese, Tundra Swans and beluga whales while in the vicinity of the Mackenzie Delta. The estuary formed at the mouth of the Mackenzie River where it empties into the Beaufort Sea is classified as a delta. For 7,000 years sediment brought down river has built up to create a vast surface area where wildlife congregates.

Today, explore Herschel Island, a unique island situated between land and sea. Its dry polar climate is home to a unique collection of arctic plants, animals and sea life, including the largest colony of Black Guillemots in the Western Arctic. More than a thousand years ago, Herschel Island was occupied by the Thule people, ancestors of today’s Inuit.

As Kapitan Khlebnikov steams westward across the Beaufort Sea, be on the watch for marine mammals in the water below and seabirds swirling about the ship. Should the ship encounter pack ice, the onboard helicopters will take you aloft to watch as the powerful ship crushes through to open water.

Cross over the International Date Line and continue past Point Barrow, an important geographical landmark, marking the limit beween the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

The ship clears into Russia in Provideniya, then sails to the tiny village of Uelen, known for its talented carvers who work with walrus ivory. At Cape Dezhnev, the most easterly point of the Asian continent, the architecture remains distinctively Russian. Take a Zodiac ride to Puffin Island, where two species of the comical bird cohabit. On the shores of Ittygran Island, the ribs of whales, planted in the tundra by people long ago, still stand on lowland known as “whalebone alley.” The final shore landing planned is a visit to Novoyo Chaplino, where the locals, dressed in traditional attire, will demonstrate their skills as wrestlers and ropers of reindeer, if the herd is nearby.

Today, disembark the Kapitan Khlebnikov in Anadyr, Russia, then transfer by helicopter one last time from the ship to the airport for the charter flight to Anchorage, Alaska, where you spend the night.

After breakfast, head to the airport for your flight home, or to your next adventure.