A spit of shingle a few hundred metres wide, the Chukchi Sea on one side, a vast lagoon on the other: Uelen fits entirely on this strip of shore set at the far eastern tip of Russia. The village looks out toward the Bering Strait, and the coast of Alaska lies barely a hundred kilometres away. Expedition ships anchor offshore; depending on sea conditions, passengers reach the beach by Zodiac.

A landing that has to be earned

It all starts with the swell. When it allows, the inflatable boats speed toward the shore, and passengers set their boots down on the dark pebbles, greeted by the guides and often by a good part of the community. Even in midsummer, the air bites; hoods are pulled tight as soon as the wind picks up, and fog can swallow the shore in a few minutes before giving it back, washed in light. Fewer than a thousand people live here, the vast majority of them Chukchi, in simple houses lined up along a few windswept streets. Whale bones sometimes emerge from the ground, remnants of an economy that has always looked to the sea. The sense of being somewhere else is immediate, complete, silent.

Walrus ivory

Uelen's pride is housed in a modest building: the walrus ivory carving workshop, paired with a small museum said to be unique in the world in its specialty. For generations, master engravers have transformed tusks here into meticulous scenes: dog teams, whale hunts, spirits of the tundra. Visitors watch the artists at work, bent over their chisels, then browse the display cases featuring works by the great names of this Arctic school. A few pieces are offered to travellers, souvenirs of astonishing precision.

Songs and drums

When a ship is expected, the community hall sometimes comes alive: traditional dances, skin-covered drums, throat songs that imitate the wind and seabirds. The Uelen ensemble maintains long-standing ties with the Indigenous communities on the other side of the strait, and some of the dancers' gestures tell of hunting, sewing skins or the flight of eiders. The moment remains simple, warm, unstaged; you feel the continuity of a culture that has endured for centuries on this very shore.

Two thousand years of hunting

Around the houses, the tundra slopes gently down to the lagoon, dotted with tiny flowers during the short summer; hunting boats wait on the shore, and children follow visitors on bicycles, curious and laughing. Nearby, archaeologists study a burial ground of ancient whale hunters, occupied about two thousand years ago, whose ivory harpoons and amulets have found their way into Russia's great museums. Offshore, it is common to spot the blows of grey whales, sometimes walruses huddled in tight rafts. On the way to or from the anchorage, many ships sail past Cape Dezhnev, the easternmost point of the Eurasian continent, its cliffs rising to face America.

The Zodiac ride back leaves time to watch the colourful roofs shrink between lagoon and ocean, a thin line of human life in a boundless landscape. At the gangway, you shake off your boots, compare photographs, and the ship's hot tea has never seemed so precious. This port of call remains the preserve of expedition cruises, and every landing depends on the weather, the sea and the permits of the moment; it is therefore told in the conditional, like all true adventures. Those lucky enough to set foot here talk about it for a long time: few places give such a clear sense of having reached the end of the inhabited world.