Ootacamund
(2001 est. pop. 94,000). Udhagamandalam (Ootacamund, Ooty) is a town and district headquarters in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu State, India. It was founded by John Sullivan (1788–1855) in 1821. The average elevation is about 2,200 meters, but the town is surrounded by hills reaching as high as 2,636 meters.
Ootacamund was the first Indian "hill station," a health haven for European residents. It was for many years the summer headquarters of the Madras government, and, after Independence in 1947, it developed a strong tourist economy, catering especially to middle-class Indians. It is noted for the 155-year-old Botanical Gardens, Government House, and the artificial Ooty Lake, which John Sullivan created by damming a small valley. Aside from tourism, the main industry is the production of raw film stock at a modern factory that the government created to employ local college graduates.
The town has bus and rail connections with all parts of southern India, but there is no local airport because there is no flat land. Coimbatore, 80 kilometers away, has the nearest airport.
The original inhabitants of Ootacamund were Todas, a few dozen of whom still live there in three small hamlets. The town's name comes from their language: it means "one-stone hamlet." Today the town's population consists mainly of Tamilian and Kanarese immigrants as well as urban members of the local Badaga agricultural community.
Paul Hockings
Further Reading
Panter-Downes, Mollie. (1967) Ooty Preserved: A Victorian Hill Station in India. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Price, John Frederick. (1908) Ootacamund: A History. Madras: Superintendent, Government Press.
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