Mount Agou

Where is Mount Agou?

Mount Agou is part of the foothills of the Atakora chain.

You will find it in: Togo.

Summit: 6.867° N, 0.750° E

The story behind it

Mount Agou stands at the southern end of a long line of hills that reaches up from Ghana into Togo. Rain falls often on its western side, so the slopes stay green: banana leaves, oil palms and tall shade trees grow between the houses, and farmers pick coffee and cocoa in the cool air higher up. A narrow tarred road twists past a dozen villages to the top, where masts stand on the summit and the view runs over the plain towards the sea on clear days. People here also call the mountain Pic Baumann, a name given during the colonial period, while the old name Agou belongs to the region and its families. Because the air is fresher than in the lowlands, market gardeners grow vegetables that would wilt down below, and on early mornings clouds sit in the valleys like water in a bowl.

Find it on the globe

Mount Agou 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.