The Tsipa () is the largest tributary of the Vitim in

Buryatia Buryatia, officially the Republic of Buryatia, is a republic of Russia located in the Russian Far East. Formerly part of the Siberian Federal District, it has been administered as part of the Far Eastern Federal District since 2018. To its nort ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. It is long, and has a

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...

of .

Maksim Perfilyev Maksim Perfilyev ( (b. 1580 – d. 1638) was a Cossack explorer of Eastern Siberia and the first Russian to reach Transbaikalia. He was renowned for his diplomatic skills in negotiations with Tunguses, Mongols and Chinese. In 1618–19 Perf ...

was the first

n to reach the Tsipa in 1640.

Perch Perch is a common name for freshwater fish from the genus ''Perca'', which belongs to the family Percidae of the large order Perciformes. The name comes from , meaning the type species of this genus, the European perch (''P. fluviatilis'') ...

, pike,

lenok Lenoks, otherwise known as Asiatic trout or Manchurian trout,James Card: Fly fishing in South Korea.' Retrieved 22 June 2015. are salmonid fish of the genus ''Brachymystax'', native to rivers and lakes in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, wider Siberia (incl ...

, grayling,

taimen ''Hucho'' is a genus of large piscivorous salmonid fish known as taimens (from Finnish , 'trout', through ), and is closely related to Pacific trout and lenoks (all belonging to the same tribe in the subfamily Salmoninae). Native to the cold ...

and whitefish are also found in the waters of the Tsipa.

Course

The Tsipa is a western, left tributary of the Vitim. It has its sources in a tarn of the

Southern Muya Range The Southern Muya Range () is a mountain range in Buryatia and Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia, part of the Stanovoy Highlands. The highest point of the range is 3,067 m high Muisky Gigant; another important peak is 2363 m high Mount Shaman. Google Earth ...

, in the area where this range merges with the Ikat Range. It is known as "Upper Tsipa" (Верхняя Ципа) in its upper course until its mouth in lake

Baunt Baunt (; , ''Baunt nuur'') is the name of a body of fresh water in the Bauntovsky District, Buryatia, Russia. The village of Kurort Baunt, where there are some hot springs, is located on the southwestern shore of the lake, at the foot of Mt Bol ...

in the Baunt Depression in the northeastern part of the Vitim Plateau, near the

Bolshoy Khapton The Bolshoy Khapton () is a mountain range in Bauntovsky District, Buryatia, Russia. The nearest airport is Bagdarin Airport.Google Earth Geography This mountain range is located in the northeastern part of the Vitim Plateau. It stretches from s ...

Range. The river flows out of the lake in a NNE direction and slows down

meandering A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves in the channel of a river or other watercourse. It is produced as a watercourse erodes the sediments of an outer, concave bank ( cut bank or river cliff) and deposits sediments on an inn ...

across a swampy basin where there are many lakes, the largest of which is Busani. Then it makes a sharp bend to the west of the

Bambuyka The Bambuyka () is a river in Buryatia, southern East Siberia, Russia. It is long, and has a drainage basin of . The only inhabited place in the area is Bambuyka, Muysky District, a small hamlet located close to the mouth of the river.Googl ...

and turns south, crossing the Babanty Range through a narrow valley where it flows fast, forming

rapids Rapids are sections of a river where the river bed has a relatively steep stream gradient, gradient, causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence. Flow, gradient, constriction, and obstacles are four factors that are needed for a rapid t ...

. After leaving the mountains it turns again northeast and finally it meets the Vitim about southeast of

Taksimo Taksimo (; Buryat and , ''Taksimo'') is an urban locality (an urban-type settlement) and the administrative center of Muysky District of the Republic of Buryatia, Russia, located on the Muya River on the Muysk Plateau in the far northeast of th ...

.Tsipa - Water of Russia
/ref> Its main tributaries are the long Tsipikan and the long Amalat from the right. There are 3,227 lakes in the Tsipa basin, with a total area of .Ципа
/ ''

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; , ''BSE'') is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Great Russian Enc ...

:'' in 30 vols. / Ch. ed. A.M. Prokhorov. - 3rd ed. - M. Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978.

References

Rivers of Buryatia {{FarEast-Russia-river-stub

Course

See also

References