A New Year by Lake Inari

DAY 1

Depart Heathrow at 10.20 on Finnair scheduled flight(s) via Helsinki to Ivalo. Arrive 18.50 local time and private transfer to Nellim by Lake Inari. Check in at the Nellim Wilderness Hotel. Welcome drink, programme briefing and Sami buffet supper.

DAY 2

After breakfast it’s time to meet Christopher’s pack of Alaskan huskies whose kennels in the forest are just a short walk from the hotel and whose excited barking slowly magnifies as you approach them through the trees. Grown ups mush teams in pairs whilst children ride tucked up in a sleigh behind their guide; as the dogs pull you along a snow carpeted trail the silence is broken only by the whooshing sound of slicing sleigh runners. En route, stop by an open fire in a clearing for a restorative, warming berry juice and cookies. Lunch back at the hotel. In the afternoon its time to meet Rudolph, Donner and Blitzen whose herders take everybody for a ride on the crystal sparkling lake, having previously assembled in a Kota for a traditional ‘Crossing the ‘Arctic Circle Ceremony’. Supper at the hotel.

DAY 3

After breakfast its time for a wilderness adventure safari by snowmobile with grown ups paired up and children in a snowmobile sleigh following a trail among pine and birch close by the rock fringed shoreline of Lake Inari immortalised as Enari in Philip Pullman’s trilogy ‘His dark materials’. After crossing a mix of tundra, ice sheet and forest floor lunch is cooked over hot wood embers from an open fire in a clearing, before leaving along a fresh trail leading back to the hotel. New Year’s Eve is celebrated around an open fire in a traditional wooden Kota with a menu replete with trout from Lake Inari, King Crab from the Barents Sea and cloudberries from the lake basin.

Celebrations are not constrained by time zones: the New Year comes in early for the Skolt, an hour later for the Inari Sami and an hour after that for the Northern Sami. As the evening wears on there will be traditional dishes with Russian, Finnish and Norwegian flavours; fireworks, dancing and fortunes told from the shapes melting tin!

DAY 4

After breakfast time to relax until the afternoon when its party time on the sloping bank leading down to the lake with tobogganing, ice fishing, snow shoeing and cross country skiing. Supper in the hotel.
 

DAY 5

After breakfast, time at leisure for last minute tobogganing and snow shoeing at the Lake’s shore before transferring to Ivalo for Finnair scheduled flight(s) to Heathrow where you arrive at 17.10 local time.