The Wayanad Ghats

Some one hour drive from Gundlupet through the Bandipur forests comes wayanad district of kerala and some half an hour drive ahead we get a nodal town of this place called Sultanbattery or Sultans' battery as it was originally assigned. Around one hour drive from Sultanbattery we intrude into the wayanad ghats a relatively treacherous stretch of mountain roads the semblance of which at least does not exist in southern India.

My earliest experience with this road  was in the early 1980's and this stretch of road was narrow and raw in nature with the capacity to handle a single bus with ease and two buses from either side with constraint. In the night the problem getting more acute with large trucks laden with logs of wood literally sealing the entire space and the drivers of passenger buses using spotters in the night who alight from the bus guiding the driver through narrow inches of space.I  had my own moments of despair once in the evening when a Karnataka state transport bus made a collision with the rocks that edged this road sending a rock down in a rapid pace but the driver unruffled by all these guided the bus to safety.This happened at the topmost point and I could see the vast expanse of infinity below a large stretch of mountain ranges.

These roads are much better now being widened and strengthened and plying on this stretch or road being less cumbersome.

What is the essence of the wayanad ghat road. Twelve hair pin bends in all over a stretch of twelve kilometers taking commuters one hour to traverse which would very plainly translate into a speed of 12 Kilometers per hour. I have noted many roads across the western ghats and have found this stretch of the western ghats most fascinating on one count and at the same time the most impeding to execute.

It is time the Government of Kerala  aspire upon a project that would be radical in its nature and at the same time without precedence. A cable stayed bridge that would entertain the entire stretch of this ghat road and at the same time bypass it, lowering vehicles without much difficulty from the pinnacle to sea level a full 3000ft in all. Would this be possible I think it would be and at the same time not mingling much with the ecological aspects of this place. How would such a bridge look like. Starting some 3km before the ranges and ending some three kilometers after it thereby spreading the load over a stretch of beams without much load concentration at any point. Note that speaking from first principles , when a vehicle goes down the stretch of such a bridge it would create a high bending moment both owing to its weight and also from gravity but these forces would be countered by large struts and cable some three kiliometrs on land upstream. More than anything there would be high bending moment...but engineering people in kerala must do some ground study for the unfurling of such a structure.

What would be the benefits of such a structure....?  You almost instantly cover this stretch of space.....No chaos and confusions at driving through narrow tracts...no accidents..you save on fuel every year....and eventually trade and commerce would quadruple and the economy of this stretch getting an unprecedented fillip.