Thabana Ntlenyana

Where is Thabana Ntlenyana?

Thabana Ntlenyana is part of the Maloti Mountains, part of the Drakensberg.

You will find it in: Lesotho.

Summit: 29.467° S, 29.267° E

The story behind it

The peak sits on the Mohlesi ridge, north of the Sani Pass, in the Maloti Mountains that form part of the Drakensberg. It looks nothing like a sharp alpine summit: it is a broad, grassy swelling, and from the plateau you can simply walk to the top, though the thin air and the weather make it a long day. Lesotho is the only independent country in the world lying entirely above 1 000 metres, and even its lowest point is about 1 400 metres up. The high grassland gets more than 1 000 millimetres of summer rain and turns white with snow in winter, with temperatures swinging from below minus eight to well above thirty degrees across the year. The first recorded ascent by a mountaineering party was made in March 1951 by surveyors Desmond Watkins, Barry Anderson and Roy Goodwin. Shepherds with their flocks had of course been crossing these slopes long before that. The Sesotho name is a small joke of sorts: thaba means mountain, ntle beautiful and yana little, so the highest peak of the region is called the beautiful little mountain.

Find it on the globe

Thabana Ntlenyana 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.