Place · hill station · India
Udhagamandalam (Ooty)
Also known as Ooty, Udhagamandalam, Udagamandalam, Utakamandalam, Ootacamund
The Nilgiri hill station the British made the Madras Presidency's summer capital from the 1820s onward — the governor's summer residence, the Botanical Gardens of 1848, the Breeks Memorial School, the Ooty Club and the Nilgiri Mountain Railway from Mettupalayam to the hill station in 1908. The Badaga, Toda, Kota and Kurumba peoples' pastoral and ritual landscape sits around the colonial town, with the Toda munds on the surrounding slopes and the Mariamman temple at Ooty's centre predating the British.
- Function
- Landscape & environmental change
- Tradition
- Standard reference and local gazetteers; ASI, state archaeology and INTACH records where applicable.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 11.406, 76.693
Connections (1)
- Site adjacencyToda Munds, Nilgiris
Udhagamandalam (Ooty) is the colonial-era town built in the middle of the Toda pastoral landscape, with Toda munds scattered on the surrounding slopes within fifteen kilometres of the lake. The British governance of Ooty from the 1820s onward disrupted but did not displace the Toda, Kota, Kurumba and Badaga communities who had lived in the Nilgiris for centuries before — the hill station's modern tourism economy sits inside their older pastoral economy, which is still visible in the munds and the Toda buffalo herds.