One of the many wonders of the railway journey  between Ella and Badulla through the hill country of south-cental Sri Lanka called Nine Arches Bridge,



You can learn out of the train's windows as it crosses the viaduct and marvel at this monumental construction between Ella and Demodara stations, but to fully appreciate the magnificence of the Nine Arches Bridge, you have to stand beside the track and watch a train trundle over it. It's a fitting reward for the effort of finding the way to the bridge through the jungle.

When British engineers were engaged in construction nearly 100 years ago, they were confronted with steep terrain and deep valleys. The engineers were particularly stymied by the quagmire at the bottom of this chasm since they had no steel with ich to anchor the columns of the bridge to the valley floor. 

The metal that had been allocated for the project had been seized for the war effort in 1918. Construction came to a standstill on the Ella side of the gap as the engineers pondered what to do. This is where a local man who was supplying labor to the British contractors and had secured the trust of the engineers, offered to help.''P.K. Appuhami'' had never built a bridge before, but in desperation, the contractors handed over the project. Appuhami rounded up villagers and all his laborers to help, while the British engineers looked on with trepidation. He began by getting his men together with large rocks from the surrounding wilderness and toppling them into the ravine until they filled up the bottom. Then he followed the engineer's designs, supervising the building of stone columns and arches on the rocky bed. He completed the work in little more than a year and the construction cost was so low that the engineers were doubtful about the bridge's structural integrity. However, Appuhami was so confident that the bridge would be safe that he promised to lie under it on the first trial run of a train across the viaduct. He kept to his word, the bridge proved secure, the railway engineers were satisfied, and Appuhami was paid the full contract price. The viaduct, built with blocks of stone and cement without any reinforcing steel or concrete, was commissioned in 1921. At 944 meters above sea level, this 30-metre-tall construction curving its way across the gorge is called Ahas Namaye Palama (Nine Skies Bridge) in Sinhala. It's amazing to see what local ingenuity achieved,