Cheekha Dar

Where is Cheekha Dar?

Cheekha Dar is part of the Zagros Mountains, Kurdistan Region.

You will find it in: Iraq.

Summit: 36.777° N, 44.919° E

The story behind it

This corner of Iraq looks nothing like the hot plains most people picture. The ridge belongs to the Zagros, a chain of folded rock pushed up where two great pieces of the Earth's crust press together, and the layers are bent like the pages of a squashed book. Snow lies in the shady hollows well into summer, and small streams start here that later feed rivers far below. Shepherds bring flocks up to the high meadows in the warm months, living in tents that may have given the mountain its name. Nobody agrees exactly how high the top is: the measurements differ by a few metres, and even the border line is drawn differently on different maps. Wild pear, oak and juniper grow lower down, and bears and wolves still live in these valleys.

Find it on the globe

Cheekha Dar is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.