Chara Sands

The Chara sands cover about fifty square kilometres of the Chara basin in northern Zabaykalye - dunes up to eighty metres high, ridged and bare, with the classic desert form - and everything around them contradicts it. The Kodar ridge rises to nearly three thousand metres immediately north with glaciers on it, the basin floor beside the sand is larch taiga and sphagnum bog, permafrost lies under the dunes, and the whole thing sits at fifty-six degrees north where winter temperatures pass minus forty. The sand is glacial and lake-bed material from the end of the last glaciation, reworked by wind. There are small lakes at the edges and stunted larch and cedar growing directly out of the dunes in places. Access is from Chara across the Middle Sakukan river, which has to be forded or crossed by boat depending on level, then a walk of a few kilometres.

What you actually see

• The dunes - fifty square kilometres of bare sand up to eighty metres high.
• The contradiction - desert against glaciated peaks, bog and permafrost.
• The stunted trees - larch and cedar growing out of the sand at the edges.
• The origin - glacial and lake-bed material reworked by wind since the ice retreated.

When to go

June to September for the crossing; March gives sand against snow, which is the photograph people want. A day from Chara.

Honest expectations

The river crossing depends on level and can be impossible after rain. No facilities, water or shade on the sand. Mosquitoes in the surrounding bog are extreme in summer. Chara is reached by the BAM railway and is a long way from anywhere.

Nearby

The Kodar ridge rises north; the BAM line runs through Novaya Chara.