The Mountains of Hunger

No, not some abstract expressionist masterpiece.

[Image: ESA/Envisat]

It's a shot from the European Space Agency's MERIS satellite, showing the Tibesti mountains - in blue and black there - that straddle northern Chad and southern Libya. They're a range of largely extinct volcanos known locally as the Mountains of Hunger because of their inhospitality and general all-round bleakitude. The white areas are accumulations of carbonate salts, while the orange is desert.

Here's the more prosaic Google satellite image, with borders superimposed (that's Niger to the south west). To the left (west) somewhere in there is the extraordinary Trou au Natron volcano.