River
Besed
261 km from source to mouth · Belarus and Russia.
Belarus and RussiaFlows into Sozh
In numbers
Length
261km
Average flow
28m³/s
Basin
5,600km²
Drop
55m
from 170 m to 115 m
Countries
2
The journey
From source to mouth
261 km of river and 9 stops on the way: 1 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmSmolensk Uplandat 170 m
- 38 kmAĺšoŭkatributary
- 86 kmSuraŭtributary
- 98 kmŽaduńtributary
- 111 kmDzyarazhnyatributary
- 157 kmAlyoshnyatributary
- 162 kmPaluzhtributary
- 169 kmKrasnaya Gora6,468 people
- 194 kmKolpitatributary
- 227 kmStolbunkatributary
- 261 kmSozhat 115 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Belarus and Russia
At the mouth it carries 28 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 90 seconds. It drops from 170 m to 115 m, 0.2 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 5,600 km², about the size of BN. 77,000 people live in it. Highest water: from April to June; lowest: from January to March. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- Krasnaya GoraLargest city on its banks · 6,468 people
- Gomel Airport (GME)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 66 km from the cityCar hire at KBP airport (Boryspil)Discover Cars · Affiliate link↗
- From May to AugustThe best months to visit
Besed, month by month
Highest water: from April to June
Lowest water: from January to March. Freezing months (average below −4 °C): from January to February. Best months to visit: from May to August.
From about 19 m³/s in the lowest month to 69 m³/s in the highest. An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.
The basin
Besed: the basin in numbers
5,537 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 77,000people live in the basin
- 14/km²people per km²
- 159maverage altitude of the basin
- 599mmof rain a year (basin average)
- 6.0°Caverage air temperature
- 3%protected areas
What covers the basin
- 26% Forest
- 41% Cropland
- 18% Pasture
- 1% Towns and cities
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Along the river
Besed: what you find on the way
From OpenStreetMap, within 1.6 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit


Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Photos
Besed in pictures

Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
SozhTributaries (18)
Also: Suraŭ, Paluzh, Stolbunka, Žaduń, Dzyarazhnya, Alyoshnya, Aĺšoŭka, Kolpita, Muzjitjok, Vojskaja, Zhadun, Zubr, Mašoŭka, Elenka, Splavień, Aziaryščanskaja, Blahaŭka, Trastsyanka
Nearby
Rivers nearby
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q2415430) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed from the source to the mouth given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.