The Iturup Island is the largest of all Kurils (6725 square kilometers), its length 200 kilometers and an average width 30 kilometers. It has scores of volcanoes. Many of them are active. Just open any of the two existing tourist booklets on the island and you will read about it. There are three monuments to Lenin. You can count them, searching the unpretentious local streets. And hot mineral water spas on the shore of the Sea of Okhotsk to top it all… During the salmon run, many people come here in search of a job. I, together with my friend, followed suit. The trip of last fall was third in a row.

The island is separated from the mainland geographically, and from the rest of the world by border guard control. The latter has existed always: passenger boats and planes arriving from Sakhalin have been checked regularly. It has been long since they last saw whales here. Preserved were only names from the old, by our current estimates, times. Less frequent are reminiscences of old-timers and witnesses: more and more people on the island become temporary. What triggered the massive exodus from the island was the 1994 earthquake. Even the military leave.

No one here is surprised hearing about bears rampaging on the outskirts of  villages, day or night. A she-bear with a bear-cub used to come to Yasniy Village to raid the local fish cannery. The bear-cub, lean one-year-old, was nicknamed "Dokhodyaga" (Last Leg) by camping student-workers. They were about to put a rope on his neck instead of a collar, while the she-bear was out in the village killing two cows. The bears left next fall.

No one is afraid of bears here any longer, even when they walk side by side with men. The matter is not in the fearlessness of the islanders. Sooner than not it is in the inevitability of such dangerous neighborhood. During the salmon runs bears feed mostly on fish. The men live on the same fish. The dumps of the gutted fish (only eggs are taken) are commonplace. Often, they even use that fish to fertilize private vegetable gardens.

It is better drive slowly than walk fast! This saying perfectly fits the Iturup island. This is the most bamboo ridden island in the entire archipelago. It is hard to make your way through the bamboo thickets. The bus service between the villages is rare and irregular. The buses running through the jungles to the air strip in the center of the island are tied to the flights and weather correspondingly.

They say, when the Japanese were first allowed into the area, they were much surprised: "We were told your roads are bad. As it appears you do not have any roads at all." Indeed, no black top or concrete roads have ever existed here. The gravel ones that do exist must be of pure gold as it costs much every year to mend them. Anyway, the islanders just laugh the matter off saying: "We have no roads, just directions."