AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The Selennyakh is a 796-kilometre river threading through the far northeast of the Sakha Republic, one of the most remote landscapes on Earth. A left tributary of the great Indigirka, it drains 30,800 square kilometres of permafrost-underlain lowlands and intermontane basins before joining the Indigirka on its way to the East Siberian Sea.↗↗
A River at the Edge of the Inhabited World
The Selennyakh originates at 420 metres elevation where the Kharga-Salaa and Nyamnya rivers meet on the northwestern flank of the Chersky Range, one of the least-visited mountain systems in Russia. From there it flows southeast through the Moma-Selennyakh Depression, a wide valley bounded by the Burkat and Khadaranya ranges on one side and the Selennyakh Range on the other, before bending northeast and crossing the vast, flat Aby Lowland toward the Indigirka.↗↗
Along its entire course the only permanent settlement is Sayylyk, a small village in the Ust-Yansky District. The basin is studded with thermokarst lakes, and winter nalédi — thick sheets of ice that form over the riverbed when underground water breaks through the frozen surface — are a characteristic feature of the landscape. The river freezes in early October and does not break up until late May, meaning its open-water season lasts barely four months.
