Great Rivers of Eurasia, From the Rhine to the Lena

The trail begins in the Swiss Alps with the Rhine. It flows roughly 1,230 kilometers through or along the borders of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands to the North Sea, and it has long been one of the busiest commercial waterways in Europe.

The Rhone also rises from a Swiss Alpine glacier. It passes through Lake Geneva and reaches the Mediterranean through a wide delta, and it has shaped the wine regions and trade routes of its valley for centuries.

The Elbe rises in the Czech mountains and crosses Germany to the North Sea near Hamburg. It has served as a trade route and, during the Cold War, briefly marked part of the divide between East and West Germany.

Moving east, the Dnieper flows through Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv, before reaching the Black Sea. It has been a significant trade and transport route since the era of the medieval Kievan Rus.

The Don rises near Moscow and runs roughly 1,870 kilometers south into the Sea of Azov. A canal connects it to the Volga, linking the Caspian and Black Sea drainage basins.

The Volga is the longest river in Europe. It rises northwest of Moscow and flows some 3,500 kilometers south into the landlocked Caspian Sea, and it has long been Russia's principal inland waterway.

The trail now turns to Western Asia. The Tigris rises in Turkey and flows through Iraq, passing the ancient city of Baghdad before joining the Euphrates near the Persian Gulf. Together with the Euphrates it defined the historic region of Mesopotamia.

The Indus rises in Tibet and flows through the disputed Kashmir region and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. It gave its name to the ancient Indus Valley civilization and remains central to Pakistan's agriculture through an extensive irrigation canal system.

The Brahmaputra rises in Tibet, where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo, and flows through northeastern India and Bangladesh to join the Ganges and empty into the Bay of Bengal. It carries an exceptionally heavy sediment and water load and is prone to severe seasonal flooding.

The Mekong runs roughly 4,300 kilometers from the Tibetan Plateau through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam to the South China Sea. It sustains one of the world's largest inland fisheries and the rice-growing economies along its course.

The Yellow River, known in Chinese as the Huang He, flows roughly 5,400 kilometers from the Tibetan Plateau to the Bohai Sea. It carries the heavy loess silt that gives it its name and color, and it is often called the cradle of Chinese civilization, though its banks also saw some of history's most devastating floods.

The Amur forms much of the border between Russia and northeastern China before flowing into the Sea of Okhotsk. Known in Chinese as the Heilong Jiang, it supports significant fisheries and has long served as a geopolitical boundary.

The last three stops are the great rivers of Siberia, which run north to the Arctic. The Ob is formed by the confluence of the Biya and Katun rivers and flows north into the Gulf of Ob and the Kara Sea. With its tributary the Irtysh, it drains one of the largest river basins in Asia.

The Yenisei flows roughly 3,500 kilometers from the mountains of Mongolia north into the Kara Sea, and it is among the largest rivers by discharge volume in the world. Much of its length freezes solid for months each winter.

The trail ends with the Lena, one of the longest rivers in the world. It flows about 4,400 kilometers from the mountains near Lake Baikal north to the Laptev Sea in the Arctic, and its delta is one of the largest protected wetland areas in Russia.