Making the 18 hairpin bends an
easy drive
The road that links Kandy and Mahiyanganaya or the
famous eighteen hair-pin bend road was feared by
many drivers as one of the difficult roads in the
country. The famous 18 hair-pin bends made it a
difficult road even for many experienced motorists
and became one of the roads to test their driving
skills.
But for more than one and half centuries, this road
linking Kandy and Padiyathalawa through Digana,
Teldeniya, Medamahanuwara, Hunnasgiriya and
Udadumbara the most picturesque hilly terrain in the
Kandy district and Passara, Mahiyanaganaya in the
Uva Province was the only road that linked these
main cities until the construction of Raja Mawatha
in the early 1990s.
It also became an attractive road among the local
and foreign travellers as it was a very rare
experience for them to pass this terrain during
their voyages to Mahiyangana or to the Eastern part
of the country. For many children and also adults,
counting these 18 bends during their journey and to
have a brief stop over at the top of the hilly part
to enjoy the picturesque scene in the valley of
Mahiyanagana from the top of the hills was a very
enjoyable experience.
Though it is famous as the 18 bend road people come
across only 17 bends in reality as one bend was
removed long ago after widening that section of the
road.
For me, passing the 18 bends road was an
unforgettable experience not because of the most
tasty ‘Pol Roti’ we ate on our way to Mahiyangana
from a vendor catering to many motorists passing the
terrain, but due to passing this terrain in a
vehicle with a suspect brake system in pitch
darkness in the night.
I can still recall the driving skills of Abeyratne,
a driver attached to the Mahaweli Development
Ministry in the latter part of 1990s and the way he
controlled the vehicle using clutch balancing to
take us to Mahiyangana safely. It was the darkness
that gave us courage to give him the green light but
only realised the real danger of our act on the
following day when we were passing the same terrain
in broad daylight.
President Rajapaksa opened Daha ata wanguwa -
Sri Lanka
