In a sense, he was right. A lot of these roads were English, many of them engineered by a single man: Thomas Skinner. He began building highways in 1820, at the age of sixteen. ‘Ceylon,’ the governor had said, ‘needs firstly roads, secondly roads, and thirdly roads.’ For the next forty-seven years, Skinner worked to this brief, covering the island in over three thousand miles of road. They creep along ledges, spiral up mountains, bore through rocks and wobble over forty-seven bridges. Now, each year, for hundreds of Sri Lankans, the last thing they’ll ever see is one of Skinner’s works of art.
So Thomas Skinner is the guy to blame for the roads... Some of them do feel they were planned by a sixteen year old.
