Tukulany Sand Dunes

Tukulan is the Yakut word for these: patches of open moving sand inside the boreal forest, of which the Saamys Kumaga near the Lena is the best known, covering several square kilometres of dunes with no vegetation, ridged by wind, sitting directly against larch taiga. They are relict features, formed under the colder drier conditions of the late glacial when this region was closer to steppe and tundra than forest, and they have persisted since because the sand is too mobile for the forest to close over. Underneath is permafrost, which is the incongruity people notice - dunes over permanently frozen ground at a latitude of sixty-one degrees, in a place where winter temperatures pass minus fifty. They lie inside the Lena Pillars national park and are visited on the same boat trips from Yakutsk, with a landing and a walk in from the river.

What you actually see

• The open sand - dunes of several square kilometres standing bare inside taiga.
• The relict origin - sand from a colder, drier late-glacial period that never revegetated.
• The permafrost beneath - dunes sitting directly on permanently frozen ground.
• The forest edge - larch taiga running straight up against moving sand.

When to go

June to September, on the same boat trips that visit the Lena Pillars. Half a day for the landing and walk.

Honest expectations

Reached only as part of a Lena boat trip - there is no road access. The walk in from the landing is through forest and then soft sand. Mosquitoes are extreme in summer. No shade or water on the dunes.

Nearby

The Lena Pillars are along the same stretch of river; Yakutsk is downstream.