Mousa Ali

Where is Mousa Ali?

Mousa Ali is part of the Afar Triangle.

You will find it in: Djibouti.

Summit: 12.469° N, 42.404° E

The story behind it

Mousa Ali is a worn volcano with a wide crater bowl at its top, and its slopes are made of dark lava that broke apart in the heat and cold of the desert. The land around is one of the hottest places on Earth, a stony plain where salt lakes shine white and the ground keeps splitting because the continent is slowly tearing open here. Higher up, the air is cooler, thin bushes and juniper trees find enough moisture, and herders from the Afar people bring goats and camels to graze after rare rainfalls. Few travellers visit the peak; there is no road to the summit and water has to be carried along. How tall the mountain is exactly is not fully settled, since the measurements differ by a few metres, but it is clearly the high point of the whole country.

Find it on the globe

Mousa Ali 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.