Kolli Hills Road (Most Dangerous Mountain Road), Kolli Hills, Central Tamil Nadu, South, India

Kolli Hills Road (Road MDR181) is a dangerous mountain road with a length of 46.7 km located in Kolli Hills or Kolli Malai, a small mountain range located in central Tamil Nadu in Namakkal district on the east coast of South India. The road features 70 continuous hairpin bends. The Mountain is named Kolli Malai after the name of Goddess Ettukkai Amman (also known as Kollipavai) guarding the hills with her divine protection.

The road starts from Kalappanaickenpatti. 70 continuous hairpin bends take you to Kolli Malai or ‘the mountains of death’. Riding through these hairpin bends is an exhilarating experience. Up to around the 25th hairpin bend, the road is great. After that the road is quite bad - pot holes and patches. Some of the hairpin bends are very narrow and do not have space for two vehicles to take the turn. The views of the plains below are beautiful and the dense green tropical forests surrounding the hairpin bends adds to the charm. The road is a ghat road: the name of the access routes into the mountainous Western and Eastern Ghats mountain ranges of the Indian Subcontinent. These roads are remarkable feats of engineering and most date back to British times. Ghat roads were built to connect to the famous Hill Stations of the Indian Subcontinent.

It’s paved with some steep parts. Starting from Karavalli, at 238 meters above the sea level, the ascent is 20.4 km long via 70 hairpin turns, ending at 1.198 meters, at Solakkadu. The elevation gain is 960 meters. The average gradient is 4.70%. To make the journey more exciting and thrilling, there are markings at every turn painted in blue and yellow on stones. So you keep on counting the no of turns you have completed and the turns yet to be completed. The weather is very pleasant and full of fresh air as it is scarcely populated and away from the main city.

The 70 hairpin bends, which are spread across a little more than  fifteen kilometers are nearly continuous and it is indeed a pleasure to drive on these  winding roads. It can  be visited all round the year except for the month of January as the temperatures drop down  considering the altitude of this picturesque destination. The hairpin bends are  numbered.

Kolli Hills is visited by nature lovers, hikers, trekking clubs, tourists and meditation practitioners among hill stations in Tamil Nadu. Agaya Gangai is the waterfall situated near the Arappaleeswarar temple.