Nizhny Bestyakh is an urban locality (a settlement

Urban-type settlement

Urban-type settlement ; , selyshche mis'koho typu ) is an official designation for a type of locality used in some of the countries of the former Soviet Union...

) in Megino-Kangalassky District of the Sakha Republic, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, located on the east bank of the Lena River

Lena River

The Lena is the easternmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean . It is the 11th longest river in the world and has the 9th largest watershed...

, opposite the republic's capital city

Capital City

Capital City was a television show produced by Euston Films which focused on the lives of investment bankers in London living and working on the corporate trading floor for the fictional international bank Shane-Longman....

 of Yakutsk

Yakutsk

With a subarctic climate , Yakutsk is the coldest city, though not the coldest inhabited place, on Earth. Average monthly temperatures range from in July to in January. The coldest temperatures ever recorded on the planet outside Antarctica occurred in the basin of the Yana River to the northeast...

. Population:

The settlement is the terminus of the only road connection to Yakutsk, the Lena Highway, and is the starting point of the Kolyma Highway, leading to Magadan

Magadan

Magadan is a port town on the Sea of Okhotsk and gateway to the Kolyma region. It is the administrative center of Magadan Oblast , in the Russian Far East. Founded in 1929 on the site of an earlier settlement from the 1920s, it was granted the status of town in 1939...

 and the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

 coast further east. A ferry allows for transport across the Lena in summer; in winter traffic drives directly across the ice on the frozen river. In spring and autumn, the crossing is not possible due to the movement of ice.

Nizhny Bestyakh was planned to be the terminus of the Amur Yakutsk Mainline

Amur Yakutsk Mainline

The Amur-Yakutsk Mainline is a partially complete railway in eastern Russia, linking the Trans-Siberian Railway and Baikal-Amur Mainline with the Sakha Republic....

; however, plans now call for a road and a rail bridge to be built further upstream, allowing a year-round land transport connection to Yakutsk. In future, Nizhny Bestyakh may find itself on the route for planned extensions of the railway towards Magadan

Magadan

Magadan is a port town on the Sea of Okhotsk and gateway to the Kolyma region. It is the administrative center of Magadan Oblast , in the Russian Far East. Founded in 1929 on the site of an earlier settlement from the 1920s, it was granted the status of town in 1939...

. There are plans to make it a transport hub for northeastern Siberia and eventually grant town status.