The Arctic

This is terra incognita compared to the Antarctic: much of the high Arctic remains unmapped. The fabled Northwest Passage, the ice-choked route that claimed the 1845 Franklin expedition has, until recently, remained off the map for most tourists. Cruise ships are making cautious inroads, but this is still a place of isolation and wonder where, in summer, you can board a small ship to cross the magnetic pole with nothing in sight but a swirling green blanket of aurora. Shore excursions cross miniature boreal ‘forests’ of dwarf shrubs, mosses and lichens, bringing you within sniffing distance of Arctic fox, hare and musk ox that have barely, if ever, encountered humans — and within safe sight of polar bears.