Yakutia > Tours to Yakutia

Tours to Yakutia

Travellers from around the world, who are interested in the ancient fauna, inevitably come to Yakutia to follow the Mammoth Routes. The significant part of all world-known findings of mammoths, wooly rhinoceros, bison, musk ox and cave lions has been discovered here.

Yakutia is a land of long-standing hunting and fishing traditions, one the rarest places in the world with preserved virgin nature and animal and vegetal life diversity. It hosts ten most valuable furbearing animals, six species of wild ungulate animals and about twenty species of water and upland fowl.

Yakutia is the only place in the world where you can see the black crane, Ross'gull and Siberian white crane. The moose, red deer, reindeer, snow ram, polar and brown bears, foxes, sable, wolverines abound in pristine taiga, tundra and the eternal Arctic ice. Mountainous lakes overflow with salmon, burbot and grayling; rivers are plentiful with Arctic cisco, whitefish, white salmon, pike and pollan. The local fish is very delicious.

Original folklore, traditional crafts, religion and world-view of Sakha people are also of groat may get acquainted with thorn while visiting a traditional Ysyakh festival, held during the summer solstice on June 21-22. This ceremony celebration has been brought by ancestors of the Yakut people from steppes of Central Asia.

Whatever tour you choose, each trip will have a pronounced ecological trend. Yakutia is one of the few places on Earth where the untouched virgin nature has been preserved: mountains, rivers, lakes, coniferous forests (taiga) and northern prairies (tundra). You will see ages-old larches, ancient rocks, such as Lena Pillars and Kysylyakh, ice-age (Pleistocene) flora and fauna. Unique Yakut horses, which easily sustain -50°C and are able to pasture on their own and dig the food out from under the snow, are believed to be contemporary of mammoths. There are more than 1 850 plants species in Yakutia, about one hundred of them have been acknowledged as officinal and are used in traditional and official medicine.

Lakes are so numerous in Yakutia that each resident could own one personal lake. There are plenty of rivers and streams, while the major one is the Lena, the river that Yakutsk is situated on. The Lena is the fourth longest river in the world, and its delta is the second biggest. The Lena ice-drift is truly grand and unfor-gettable spectacle, one of the crucial yearly events in the local life.

The basins are full of various fish species: lam-preys, sturgeons, herrings, salmons, whitefish, graylings, carps and many others. There are about 50 species of 18 families over-all.

There are two wildlife reserves, four national parks and more than one hundred natural resources reserves in Yakutia. The total size of the protected zone is 646 108,9 sq. km, that is 21% of Yakutia).

Wild birds and animals can be observed in their natural habitat here. There are 64 mammal species and 280 bird species, many of them are rare or endangered. Nowadays, there are 15 crane species worldwide and six of them are found in Yakutia. These birds cover thousands of kilo-meters to breed here, in the North. Siberian white crane or sterkh (the Yakut name is 'kytalyk') has been held sacred by Yakut people since ancient times. There is a belief that seeing a white crane even once makes you happy for the rest of your life, but seeing white cranes' dance makes you so much as three times happier.

Another official name for Yakutia is Sakha Republic. The original name of Yakut or Sakha people is 'Urankhay-Sakha'. Sakha people is the northernmost and most likely the oldest of the numerous family of Turkic cattle- breeding peoples. A Yakut national holiday - Ysyakh - is celebrated in late June. The celebration is the ritual Sun greeting - the beginning of Summer, the commencement of a new life cycle. In old times Ysyakh used to be a universal birthday, since only those who survived through the long severe winter could rightfully add a year to their age.