Which is the REAL Mountain of the Moon?

While reading and translating "Chander Pahar", I was very curious about the real Mountains of the Moon - was there such a place at all?

It turns out that there is indeed such a place. The term Mountains of the Moon or Montes Lunae referred to a mountain range in central Africa that is the source of the White Nile - check this out. However, the real Mountains of the Moon is far away from the final setting of Shankar's adventure; the source of the White Nile is Lake Victoria in Tanzania.

The location of these fabled mountains had been disputed over the centuries. The Scottish explorer, James Bruce identified the Mountains of the Moon with Mount Amedamit in Ethiopia.

G.W.B. Huntingford suggested in 1940 that the Mountain of the Moon should be identified with Mount Kilimanjaro (left - one of the most beautiful mountains in the world), and "was subsequently ridiculed in J. Oliver Thompson's History of Ancient Geography published in 1948". Huntingford later noted that he was not alone in this theory, citing Sir Harry Johnston in 1911 and Dr. Gervase Mathew later in 1963 having made the same identification.

O. G. S. Crawford identified this range with the Mount Abuna Yosef area in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia. The picture on the left is of the path leading to Mekina Medhane Alem church (Lalibela).

"Mountains of the Moon" is also the name of a movie - see here - which tells the story of Captain Richard Francis Burton's and Lt. John Hanning Speke's expedition to find the source of the Nile river in the name of Queen Victoria's British Empire, their meeting, their friendship emerging amidst hardship, and then dissolving after their journey. I haven't seen the movie; this review from Rotten Tomatoes is quite interesting. "Director Bob Rafelson fulfilled a lifelong dream when he finally received backing to complete Mountains of the Moon. The film recreates the exploratory adventures of 19th century visionaries Sir Richard Burton (Patrick Bergin) and John Henning Speke (Iain Glen). The heart of the film is the effort by Burton and Speke to discover the true source of the Nile river. This occurs well into the film, after several torturous scenes involving the injuries sustained by the protagonists during other expeditions and their growing friendship (which, the film intimates, goes far beyond friendship). Rafaelson's fascination with this story, and his insistence upon painstaking historical accuracy, unfortunately compromises his ability to make an interesting film. There are so many starts and stops during the first half that we sincerely hope Burton and Speke will chuck it all and set up a pub in Bristol or something. What saves Mountains of the Moon is the rapport between its stars and the brilliant, epic-like cinematography of Roger Deakins."

Mountains in Chander Pahar - 2

The two major mountain ranges I will write about here are the Ruwenzori and the Richtersveldt - the latter is, of course, the more important as the location where Shankar's denouement with destiny gets played out.

The picture on the left is pretty amazing - it could be from the Alps or the Himalayas!

"The Rwenzori Mountains, previously called the Ruwenzori Range (the spelling having been changed in about 1980 to conform more closely with the local name), and sometimes the Mountains of the Moon, is a mountain range of central Africa, often referred to as Mt. Rwenzori, located on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with heights of up to 5,109 m (16,761 ft). The highest Rwenzoris are permanently snow-capped, and they, along with Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya are the only such in Africa." For more, visit this, and this; the latter is particularly beautiful.

The Richtersveldt is also a national park in South Africa, and is far from the forbidding and forboding mountain range where explorers died a horrible death. This could look like the place where Shankar was rescued - except that he was found in Rhodesia, and the Richtersveldt is in South Africa!

As this article mentions, it is "A favourite amongst nature travellers to South Africa, the landscape is sometimes described as "martian". Though barren and desolate at first glance, closer examination reveals the area to be rich in desert lifeforms, with an array or unique species specially adapted for survival." Wikipedia has a great article here, and if you love traveling, you must visit this as well.

Mountains in Chander Pahar - 1

One of the most exciting episodes in the book is the eruption of the volcano and the miraculous escape from certain death of Diego Alvarez and Shankar.

The African continent is highly seismically active, and indeed "Africa is the only region other than the Mediterranean with an historically dated B.C. eruption (at Mount Cameroon, observed by a passing Carthaginian navigator in the 5th century B.C.)." For more details, you should check this and this.

In this post, we shall visit only the mountains that the author has mentioned.

First, the mountain called Ol Doinyo Lengai.

This is an active volcano located in the north of Tanzania and is part of the volcanic system of the Great Rift Valley in Eastern Africa. It is located in the eastern Rift Valley, south of both Lake Natron and Kenya. It is unique among active volcanoes in that it produces natrocarbonatite lava, a unique occurrence of volcanic carbonatite. Further, the temperature of its lava as it emerges is only around 510 °C (950 °F). A few older extinct carbonatite volcanoes are located nearby, including Homa Mountain (ref. Wikipedia).

Another volcano the author mentions is Chimanimani. The Mountains, with their jagged peaks and deep ravines, form a natural border with Mozambique for 40km. Whilst most of the range is in Mozambique, much of the Zimbabwean side is now protected within the Chimanimani National Park.

"The Chimanimani Mountain range is a geological feature pertaining to that rent that runs from the Cape to the Levantine, and is known along most of its distance as the Great Rift Valley. It marks the collision of two tectonic plates, and is poised at the apex of several local ecological zones. The featured of the range are clearly old. There is a gnarled, Tolkienesque venerability in the many, many cracks and fissures, gorges and gullies, lakes and rivers." To read more about this picturesque place, please go here.
The author mentions Kruger Mountains.

The closest I could get to that is the Kruger National Park, one of the largest game reserves in Africa. To find out more, go here. 


The Virunga Mountains, also mentioned in the book, are a chain of volcanoes in East Africa, along the northern border of Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda.


Volcano tourism is big there, and here's an article on this: "Virunga invites tourists to see Mount Nyamulagira volcano erupt!" Requires more gumption and colones than I, for one, possess!! 
There are a few other mountains that the author mentions - Ruwenzori and Richtersveldt being the most important - I will write about them in another post.