Why Newton’s Law seems to fail at Kenya’s Kyamwilu Hill: Scientists explain the gravity illusion

The world is full of unique and wonderful places to visit. One of the top tourist destinations in the world is Kenya. It has breathtaking natural beauty and spectacular national parks full of incredible wildlife like the Nairobi National Park just south of the nation’s capital.

However, perhaps a lesser-known tourist destination near Nairobi has something that is truly mindboggling, a unique geographical feature where the laws of gravity don’t seem to apply. Things go up when they should go down.

The place where nature defies Newton’s Laws

The place is known as Kyamwilu Hill, located about 40 miles southeast of Nairobi along the Machakos–Kangundo road in Machakos County. Visitors to the place won’t notice anything out of the ordinary at first glance to attract as many people as it does.

However, set a ball on the road and the unexpected will happen, it will begin rolling uphill. The same thing will happen if you leave your car in neutral or pour water out on the pavement, they will seem to go in the wrong direction.

The geographical feature is known as a ‘gravity hill’, also a magnetic or mystery hill. Newton’s Laws aren’t being broken, it is merely an optical illusion. The truth is that the ball, car or water is actually going downhill, but because of the layout of the surrounding terrain the slight downward slope appears to be an upward one.

Kyamwilu Hill is not the only place where this optical illusion is present. They can be found at multiple locations all over the world and magnetic or supernatural forces are generally attributed to them. Kyamwilu Hill has its own mythical story.

A story of love turns into a tug-of-war

Legend has it that long ago there were two friends, Kyalo and Mwilu, who both fell in love with the same woman, Mwende. They both proposed to her and Mwende finally agreed to both, but only if it were a shared marriage.

While things started out amicably, she would alternate between each of their houses, over time the situation wore on the men and they began to quarrel over Mwende’s attention. Then one day both men passed away, but they carried their feud with them into the afterlife.

Each man was buried on opposite sides of the hill, so they are tugging things from one side to the other resulting in the effect that people see when they visit Kyamwilu Hill, which is named in their honor fusing their two names together.

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