Polar Exploration

The Difference Between Cruising Inward and Outward During our agency training, Sven Lindblad described the difference between a conventional cruise and an expedition cruise in a way that stuck with us. A conventional cruise is inward; an expedition cruise is outward. It is a simple distinction, but it gets to the heart of what Lindblad does. The company was among the first to bring non-scientists to Antarctica in 1966, a place where access has always been restricted. The thin

The People Behind the Experience The expedition team is the backbone of a Lindblad voyage. These are the people who help guests understand an environment they may never have encountered before. A naturalist can point out details in wildlife behaviour that most visitors would miss, while a scientist can explain what is happening in the landscape around them. We recently spoke with Cindy Miller Hopkins, who has travelled to the North Pole eleven times. Each visit was different.

AN Interview with Dr. Claudio Aporta When we look at a map of the Arctic, we tend to see coastlines, islands, shipping routes and vast stretches of ice. But a map cannot tell us how a landscape is understood by the people who have travelled across it for generations. This distinction matters as the Arctic becomes more accessible. The retreat of sea ice is changing traditional travel routes while bringing increased shipping and tourism to communities that have their own histor

Greenland Is Much More Than Ice Greenland is difficult to describe in one sentence. Around 80 percent of the country is covered by ice, with an ice sheet covering more than 1.7 million square kilometres. Yet most people live along the coast, where the landscape changes completely. This is one of the things that makes Greenland so interesting. You have an enormous ice-covered interior, but along the coast there are communities, history and contemporary Greenlandic life. The re