Rwanda / DR Congo volcano
Mount Karisimbi
You can see 249 km from here, looking north-east.
Calculating the panorama…
Drag to turn around. The relief is drawn 2.2 times taller so the ridges can be read; far ridges are paler, as in the real air.
The view
Up to 249 km away.
Calculated on the relief one degree at a time, up to 250 km, with the curvature of the Earth and the refraction of the air: what stands above the horizon from here.
Our own rating, from the relief and the climate only: open horizon (35 points), how far you see (25), sea and named peaks in view (20) and clear months (20).
- 249 kmFarthest ridgelooking north-east
- 100%Open horizonof the circle where the horizon is below your eyes
- 31Peaks in viewnamed summits that rise above the relief in front
- 4,483 mAltitudeabove the sea, at the highest point of the viewpoint
The 31 peaks you can name from here
From west to east as you turn around: height, distance and direction. Each one links to its guide on Peakyas, our mountain atlas.
From the relief only: buildings, trees and haze are not in the model. On a hazy day you see much less; 250 km is the limit of our calculation.
The sun
The best sunsets are in July.
When the sun really disappears from this viewpoint — behind the relief or into the sea — and in which direction, on the 15th of each month, in local time.
- Janwest-4 min before the sea-level sunset18%
- Febwest-4 min before the sea-level sunset16%
- Marwest-4 min before the sea-level sunset14%
- Aprwest-4 min before the sea-level sunset10%
- Maywest-4 min before the sea-level sunset15%
- Junnorth-west-4 min before the sea-level sunset28%
- Julwest-4 min before the sea-level sunset34%
- Augwest-4 min before the sea-level sunset24%
- Sepwest-4 min before the sea-level sunset18%
- Octwest-2 min before the sea-level sunset13%
- Novwest-2 min before the sea-level sunset12%
- Decsouth-west-4 min before the sea-level sunset16%
- Time: when the sun goes behind the horizon you see from here.
- Minutes: how much earlier the relief hides the sun.
- %: share of clear sky that month (NASA, 2001–2020).
The highlighted months are the clearest. Golden hour starts about an hour before.
The place
Mount Karisimbi.
Volcano on the Rwanda–Democratic Republic of the Congo border
Mount Karisimbi is a volcano in Rwanda, 4,483 m above the sea.
On a clear day the farthest ridge you can see is 249 km away, looking north-east.
31 named peaks rise above the relief in front; the most prominent is Mount Muhabura (4,127 m), 28 km away.
The horizon is open, below your eyes, over 100% of the circle.
The skies are clearest in July.

Get there and stay
- Camp before karisimbicampsite · 1.6 km · 1 within 10 km
- Wilderness Bisateplace to stay · 10 km · 1 within 10 km
- Busogonearest town · 12 km in a straight linePlaces to stay in BusogoBooking.com · sponsored link↗
- Goma International Airport (GOM)nearest airport with scheduled flights · 30 km in a straight lineCar hire in KigaliDiscover Cars · sponsored link↗
Plan the visit
A guided tour, a bed nearby, a car.
Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.
From above
The viewpoint and its surroundings.
The satellite image of the 6 × 6 km around the viewpoint, with what OpenStreetMap shows nearby.

Around, in OpenStreetMap
- 1campsites within 10 kmCamp before karisimbi
- 1places to stay within 10 kmWilderness Bisate
- other viewpoints within 5 km
- named peaks within 5 km
- cable car and funicular stations within 5 km
- marked trails within 3 km
- shelters and huts within 5 km
- car parks within 3 km
- visitor centres within 5 km
- restaurants and cafés within 3 km
Counted in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit. A low number may just mean nobody has mapped it yet.
In our other atlases
What you see from Mount Karisimbi, and what is near.
Everything around this viewpoint — mountains, water, forests, birds, caves and the night sky — in the family's atlases.
Figures from the sister sites' databases (Wikidata, HydroATLAS, GeoNames, OpenStreetMap, GBIF). Links open when each site is online.
Photographs
The view, as people saw it.
Other viewpoints nearby.
Where these figures come from
| Name and type | Wikidata (Q737859) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Sun | J. Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms |
| Peaks in view | Peakyas (Wikidata, CC0) |
| Panorama and altitude | Copernicus DEM GLO-90 / GLO-30 · © DLR e.V., © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH, Copernicus/ESA |
| Clouds | NASA POWER (CERES SYN1deg, 2001–2020; MERRA-2) |
| What is around | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Sister atlases | Peakyas, Birdyas, Darkskyas |
Every figure is an average, an estimate or a count from a public dataset. Licences and methods: data sources.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers, canyons, caves, dark skies, viewpoints, birdwatching or forests?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, in seven languages.






